Everyone has that little voice in the back of their head that says "Maybe don't do that." And while I'll admit, a lot of the best stories come from ignoring that voice, we have it for a reason. Luckily for these people, they listened to their little voice and avoided disaster. And it's a good thing too, otherwise, we wouldn't be able to read their stories.
Photo by Tyler Nix on Unsplash
38. Peanut allergies are no joke
I was an expediter at a restaurant. It was super busy and I was trying to get runners for food. I was about to send out a stack of dim sum when I looked at the ticket again with a note that said "no peanuts on the tempura tofu".
I had read it earlier and didn't sprinkle peanuts on it. Another server was about to run it to the table when I told him to wait and get the actual server for the table. We were slammed and he was kinda peeved but went and got him. The actual server comes back and he's all frustrated when I ask him "Does your 'no peanuts' guy, not like peanuts or is he allergic to them?" The server responds with "he's very allergic to them, that's why I put no peanuts on the ticket!" He was all being crappy with me. I told him "well the freaking tempura tofu is fried in freaking peanut oil!"
Didn't realize the head chef was behind me and heard the whole thing. Server didn't know we only used peanut oil. It was an Asian fusion really nice upscale restaurant. Needless to say, the head chef reamed this guy.
I was a half second from sending that food out too. Would have been bad.
37. I'll take "Bad friend for 100," Alex
I went to a party when I was 16. It was in a small farm town about 20-25 minutes from my actual town and everyone was out partying in somebody's parents' barn and having a really good time.
I didn't realize that our designated driver had been drinking all night. When it was time to go, I couldn't even tell she was hammered. But something wasn't right so I didn't want to drive back with them... For whatever reason, I decided to get the verbal tongue-lashing from my mom when she came to pick me up.
Well, my friends in the first car were apparently veering across the road. Got picked up by the cops and all of them got to spend the night in jail.
Glad I opted for my mom.
36. I am vengeance
I was about to put a new load of laundry into my washing machine in the dark when I saw what looked to be a large sock still in the washing machine. Put my hand halfway into the washing machine then pulled my hand back up and thought huh, I usually don't leave things in my washing machine. Turned on the light, and it was a bat sitting in there...
I never touched him, put him in some Tupperware and brought him outside. Left the container open and left him a bag of chips and he was gone in the morning.
35. Cheaters never prosper
When I was five years old my parents took my sister and me to a planetarium show, and every kid got a souvenir pencil that had the distances of the planets from the sun written on it (Mercury, Venus, Earth, etc.). The guy running the planetarium show said something like "hang on to these pencils until 7th-grade kids, and you can use them to cheat on your astronomy tests." He was joking but I never forgot, and sure enough, it was the exact pencil I used to cheat on my astronomy test in 7th grade. I felt smart but also bad because I didn't feel good cheating and (almost) never cheated after that.
34. That's some clever thinking
After enlisting in the Army, recruits get a list of everything they must bring to boot camp. On this list was a padlock. During "processing", the five or so days before the real training starts, recruits are given their military equipment including duffle bags and told to put their things (they brought with them) in the duffle bag. After finally getting everything in I was left with just the padlock. I had no idea what to do with it, but I noticed if I closed my duffel bag in a certain way, I could close the lock on the hook.
So when we get to the training unit and off the "cattle trucks" and a few hundred drill sergeants are yelling and screaming and telling us to line up, which we do, with our duffle bags in front of us. The drill sergeants then proceed to check if the bags are locked and if not they grabbed them at the bottom and whirled them around flinging the entire contents on the ground. Everyone in the entire company had their stuff dumped except for me and one other guy. Only because locking my duffle bag was the only thing I thought of doing. Putting it in my pocket was not an option because they were very clear about not having any "civilian" items in our uniform pockets.
33. Always be prepared
I was going on a road trip. We packed everything in the trunk.
Then I realized that I forgot to check the air in the spare tire.
Faced with unpacking and repacking, I thought "What are the odds? We've had the car for years, never had a flat, we probably won't have a flat now."
Then I thought "screw that" and tossed the floor pump I use for my bicycle into the trunk, "just in case".
Got a flat in the middle of nowhere. Spare was too flat to drive on. The floor pump saved my butt. It gets packed on every trip now.
32. Some people just aren't cut out for management.
I saved an email where a lead developer told me to do something stupid.
A couple of years later, the same developer, who was now a manager who liked to yell at his subordinates, was talking about some stupid decision that had been made and he yelled, "Well, why did you do that?!"
I pulled up his email, clearly instructing me to do just that. He sputtered and walked off, speechless.
This guy is one of the reasons I still have trust issues with management, even after a string of really competent, caring, trustworthy managers.
Photo by Craig Adderley from Pexels
31. Turns out the extended warranty isn't always a scam
I bought a used car that was 5 years old at the time and had 75k miles for $12k. The salesman offered an extended warranty that covered the engine for $2500, would last 3 years/36k miles. That was kind of a lot, and I usually don't buy those. I don't know what got into me that day, but I said sure.
One month and 750 miles later after an oil change at a mechanic shop, oil started shooting into the....pistons? I'm not good with cars, oil went where it wasn't supposed to go. Completely ruined the engine and turbo.
The dealer had to keep it for 3 weeks, the warranty company flew someone out to inspect the car, and eventually approved a replacement engine, turbo, and any other affected parts. Total repairs cost almost $11k, and the warranty then applied to all the new parts too.
The car drove like it was brand new! Later discovered the car had 5 previous owners before me, but I couldn't find any accident or serious repair history. This is probably the only time buying an extended warranty on something actually worked out in my favor.
30. This is why I keep all of my boxes
I bought a really nice tablet a few years ago for animation and the like.
Sometimes when you buy nice things they come in nice boxes and for some reason, I don't really want to throw this box away immediately. I put it in the storage area of my basement and forgot about it. After only about a month this $2500 tablet stopped working. It wasn't dropped or damaged, and I'm still not sure how it broke. It would simply try to boot up and fail, crashing and demanding a restart.
I called support and after several calls and many hours, we were unable to resolve the issue. They said I could send it back and get a new one if it wasn't physically damaged. They told me it NEEDED to be sent back in the original box. I now keep boxes for everything I buy until the warranty expires.
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29. What fortuitous timing
I was remodeling my house, took out a loan and had to get the house appraised to get the loan. Found that my house was worth 100k more than I had it insured for.
Raised my limits on the home insurance to 50k more than the appraised value in anticipation of completing renovations.
2 weeks later, my house burned to the ground due to a faulty bathroom fan that I did not touch.
The city, insurance company, and loan company all sent separate investigators due to how shady it looked.
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28. A good IT guy is worth his weight in gold.
I work in IT. When I started working where I do now 9 years ago, I noticed that Volume Shadow Copies (VSS) were NOT turned on on the file server. I went ahead and turned it on and thank GOD I have never had to pull a tape in the whole 9 years and I hope I never have to. I did not ask for permission to do it, because I knew Corporate wouldn't let me do it (space was $$$ back then) - the guy at Corporate that was over all their servers called and thanked me for doing it because HE was also going to do it and since I did it FIRST, he was allowed to.
I have had to use the VSS copies many times but most recently our Exec VP of Quality "accidentally" deleted her network share with ALL OF OUR employees' info in them. Thankfully VSS is on & it saved my butt as well as hers.
For the non-IT crowd, VSS is a service that is on Microsoft Servers, it allows the system to make a copy of all files changed for a period of time. I have it set to 3x a day - which captures anything deleted or changed in that time (9, 12 and 3). I just have to show my user that deleted/changed/lost their file(s) how to get them back from previous versions.
27. Safety gear is never overrated
I am an avid motorcyclist that advocates wearing gear. I had a friend that didn't really care about gear of any kind, saying it was too hot in the summer to wear it. I was finally able to convince him to get gloves and a helmet after a few years of riding without them. Not an hour after he bought the helmet and the gloves someone turned left in front of him and he went down. He was able to reduce his speed before the crash but he still went flying over the hood of a Camry at about 30 mph, landing hands and face first on asphalt. He had a nasty gash on his leg and some pretty bad road rash on his legs and arms, but his hands and head were a-ok.
The bike was a total loss, insurance paid for it and the helmet and gloves. Once he was ship shape to ride again he had me help him pick out a complete suit. I ride in full leathers and a very nice (and pretty) carbon fiber helmet if I am touring, I have Kevlar lined riding jeans for local riding. I will never get on a bike with anything less than that.
26. This story has a better ending than the show does
A couple of years ago I restarted The Sopranos from season 1. I think it's in the first season where the water heater leaks and floods Tony's basement. So there are these scenes where he's wading around in a flooded basement, I was imagining what a nightmare that would be. It reminded me that when I bought my house, the inspector told me I would need to replace the water heater within five years. I then realized that it was 12 years prior, so I suddenly got nervous. I went and looked at the water heater, and it seemed fine but I couldn't shake the feeling. I also did not have the money to pay to have a new water heater installed.
So, I decided to go ahead and buy a new water heater and then save up money to pay someone to install it.
The water heater arrived and I stored it in the laundry room. Just a few weeks after it arrived, I happened to look at the old water heater, and I noticed the catch pan under it had an inch of water in it. It was leaking! Oh no! Emergency! Except wait a minute, I already have a plan for this.
So, instead of saving up money to hire a plumber, I went to Youtube and learned how to install my own water heater. It all worked out perfectly. All because The Sopranos made me anxious about the condition of my water heater, causing me to randomly purchase a water heater I had no immediate plan to install.
25. What a shady rental company
I had originally booked a rental car for a trip to Iceland using my credit card points. Two days before, I canceled and booked it with my credit card which provides rental vehicle coverage because it looked like the weather wasn't going to be great while we were there and I wanted the extra protection. While there, we got into an accident for which we were not at fault. The car was almost a total loss and I had to pay $12k+ out of pocket to the company. It took a few months and a ton of paperwork, but the credit card company refunded all of it. I still think about how so so lucky it was that I changed the booking. I would have been ruined for a very long time otherwise.
We were only there 6 days and I was told the police take awhile to process fault in an accident. The rental company said they would refund my money if the police sided with me and the company was able to go after the other driver's insurance, but the rental company completely ghosted me and refused to communicate after I left the country. I assume so they could get paid twice.
24. Not as cool as landing in a river, though
I used to be a banner tow pilot and was often tasked to fly banners over the NYC area, especially over the Hudson River. I would pick them up at an airport in New Jersey and make my way over from there. Typically, if you were to run into some kind of engine problem, you have a fair number of places you could theoretically land if you had engine trouble. Not so much over the NYC metro area. So I picked out a "trail of breadcrumbs", if you will, of specific places I could try to land my plane if I ever had to.
On the one year anniversary of the Miracle on the Hudson (Captain Sullenberger, etc.), I was given the job to fly a banner over a boat on the Hudson that would be carrying the crew and some passengers from the flight. On the way there, my engine failed while I was less than 1000 feet above the ground. Sinking quickly, I needed to find a place to land right away. Fortunately, my best previously selected spot was just to my left - a landfill on Staten Island, and I put the plane right on the top of it.
23. You should also always carry a mirror, matches, and a flashlight.
I was on my way out the door for a trip to the Rocky Mountains with some friends. Saw a whistle sitting randomly in my junk drawer. Went out to the car to leave. Thought "Well... I guess if I get lost it could come in handy. Meh, I probably won't need it" But went back in and put it in my pocket.
Guess who got lost in the mountains and got my butt saved by having a v loud whistle with me?
22. Businesses exist to screw you over
I was offered a job in Europe, where I was promised a bonus that was x% of my salary, paid twice a year. When the offer was sent, there was no mention of the bonus and when I questioned why, I was told, "don't worry, it's in this email with my official company signature." I put that one into the saved folder, "just to be safe."
Fast forward to moving, on the first payout period I was told I needed to be with the company for 90 days first before a bonus would be paid. Ok, I was annoyed, but I guess that makes sense. On the second bonus payment, they mentioned that the company hadn't had a great year and nobody would be getting bonuses. More annoyed, but if the company isn't doing great, what are you going to do? I should add this was in 2008.
The following year rolls around and the company announces that things have really taken off and they will pay out the previous bonus period, in addition to the current bonus period. The only problem is, I literally handed in my resignation that day. I inquire to find out if I'll be receiving my bonus from the previous bonus period, and they say "are you kidding? You just quit."
I call a lawyer. I dig up the email, hand that over, and the lawyer says it's a slam dunk case. She goes after both bonus payments from the first year, and both bonus payments from the current year, even though one of them hasn't happened yet. Company HQ calls me and tries to get me to drop it, and I refer them to my lawyer.
A week later, at my new job, the lawyer informs me that they've paid all 4 bonus payments, and she also went after her own fees, so it cost me nothing.
Glad I saved that email. Cover your butt, and do not let others push you around.
21. You can never be too safe
I was undergoing pilot training and was pretty new to the whole thing feeling the pressure to perform, etc.. I walked out to preflight a plane for a solo flight (you do this completely alone... instructor was back at flying school doing something else).
After doing my walk around it's time to check the oil. Cessna 172's have a dipstick that is attached to a cap that screws into the engine. You unscrew cap and remove dipstick along with it and check the oil. Except, after I unscrew the cap there doesn't seem to be a dipstick attached to it.
I have this thought: "Well, the engine is still warm from the dudes who just flew before me so ... they flew it like this.... maybe they had a separate dipstick? They must have checked the oil some other way ....". Then I have the "well, to be safe, I should actually pack this up and go ask someone at the flight school exactly how to check the oil in this case". Note: This takes quite a chunk of time out of my supposed flight and will cut my "lesson" for the day short by quite a margin, but I do it anyway.
Long story short: The dipstick had broken off during the previous flight, that had landed just minutes before, and had slid straight into the engine, where the crank-case had been chomping away metal from the tip, that metal now circulating in the engine. The aircraft was grounded, it was extremely dangerous to fly, and at massive cost had to be stripped down, the entire engine disassembled, and they actually had to find every bit of metal missing from the dipstick and "re-assemble" the dipstick before the plane could be re-assembled and made flight worthy again.
If in a moment of stupidity, I'd taken off in that plane I'd probably be dead.
20. Not everyone got the joke
Many years ago when I was a tech at a call center, I was on a call with the client’s IT guy to fix a corrupted database.
Their IT guy shared screens with me so that I could work on the recovery.
The IT guy renamed the files with a bunch of swears as a joke.
Just to be safe, I had him say that it was he who named the files as such and not me. I asked him to confirm this each time I had to touch the files.
I took screenshots also.
Little did I know, this call was monitored (voice and screen recording).
A day later, I got called in by a manager asking me to explain a “situation” that came out of a recent call I was on—he had only seen a few screenshots that were made by the recording program. I told him to watch the whole video with the synched audio.
A few hours later, he called me into his office to apologize for speaking to me with such an “accusatory” tone.
Moral of the story: always cover your butt!
On the brighter side, after the incident, this manager was always super nice to me and backed me up whenever there was an issue.
19. Never throw water on a grease fire
I went shopping to prep for my long-distance girlfriend that was staying over and I saw boxes of Baking Soda in the market. I thought, "Oh yeah, it's smart to keep Baking Soda around in the kitchen in case you have a grease fire." -- so I grab a box. She's cooking breakfast the next morning while I'm in the shower when I hear her yelling for me. I come out and the stove is on fire. Like a champ I yell, "I'm ready for this!" and grab the baking soda and put out the fire. Always keep baking soda in the fridge, kids.
18. And that's what we call karma, kids
Noticed that the jerk next to me had parked waaaay over the line (I work at a hospital and even a crappy space like this is a godsend) so I decided to take a picture of my car well within the lines, and this car way over the lines, including the license plate.
The driver could not get into her car because mine was too close to her driver's door (as it was 2ft into the adjacent space) so she climbed into the passenger side, opened her door into mine 3 times to dent it, and drove away. Luckily with both the photo with the license plate and the witness of two paramedics, I successfully reported it to the police.
17. This advice only really applies to Americans
My mother's coworker convinced her to get the best possible insurance when pregnant because this coworker had kids deprived of oxygen at birth. She said she could lower it once the kids were 5 and seemed normal. It was a struggle as my parents were both in college and working while raising my brother, so they were looking to cut costs wherever possible. I ended up being born with a birth defect that required a transplant before 5.
Before the new doctor even told her what was wrong (after rushing me away via ambulance), they asked her if she had insurance. She was able to say, yes, gold star platinum whatever. Many kids died even with the top class care I received, so I surely wouldn't have made it without it. I'm turning 30 next year.
Thanks, random lady I've never met.
16. Seems like a good business model
Saved a receipt from my dentist. They charged me then delayed the procedure I paid for. When I asked for a refund, they changed my entire bill and told me I owed them another $300 when all they actually did was cleaning and x-rays. I submitted both copies of the invoices to my dental insurance company and told them what happened. 3 weeks later the insurance company, resolved the issue with the dentist and I got a refund.
Despite the dentist attempting to defraud me, they still regularly call me asking me to come back in. Recently they changed their name and moved a block down the road to try and hide from the plethora of negative reviews.
15. Why were you going to work during a natural disaster?
A tropical storm was blowing through my city a few months ago and we were projected to get some wind gusts and significant rain.
Because our parking lot isn't large enough for all the staff and our clients, a lot of us have to park on the street, which is lined with large, old trees.
As I rolled up the morning we were due to get the storm, I parked in my usual spot down the block. Before I shut the car off, though, I noticed that this particular spot was located directly across the street from one of the largest trees on the block. Thinking, "you know what, just to be safe..." I put the car in reverse and backed up about ten feet, safely out of the direct line of fire from any trees.
In the middle of that afternoon, in the midst of the howling wind and driving rain, we heard a huge "THUD" down the street. I went to investigate and that same tree I'd been parked across the street from fell across the road and missed my car by about eight feet.
At that moment, I was glad that I'd decided to play it safe--the car parked on the other side of the street directly across from where I'd initially been got absolutely destroyed. Crushed roof, windows were blown out, just pulverized.
14. The body is scary sometimes
My dad had a pain in his side that was near his appendix so his doctor recommended a CT scan mostly out of an abundance of caution and since my dad is retired with great insurance and plenty of free time.
His appendix was fine (the pain was constipation) but the tech noticed a spot at the bottom of his lung that turned out to be fast acting stage 4 lung and liver cancer. He was completely asymptomatic. That particular variety has a 70% 3-month mortality rate but also usually isn't caught that early.
6 months of chemo and immunotherapy and now he's in remission. It's insane to think that by the time the symptoms showed up it would have been too late or he might have just dropped dead one day and we wouldn't have even known why.
Photo by Luis Melendez on Unsplash
13. Beware the room with a moose
I took one of those extra driving classes you always hear about to get the discount on your car insurance. I was in college and my premium was killing me. The one I signed up for was an 8-hour course that I knocked out in one day and the focus was maintaining control of your vehicle in bad weather. I took it over spring break which is still a pretty snowy/icy time of year around here. The big test at the end to determine if you got the certificate was to pass the “moose test” though some places call it the elk test or the deer test. Either way, to pass the course you had to successfully swerve around some cones on an icy road and regain control of the car on the other side of the cones.
So my first day back at school from spring break, I’m driving myself and my roommate from the liquor store back to our dorm in some terrible conditions, I try to turn left into our parking lot and my car just slides straight past it, and down a hill. I try to turn the wheel right to get into a different parking lot and get closer, but not quite where I need it to be. I’m heading straight for a telephone pole. My roommate is panicking but I looked at it and I realized this is just the moose test. I managed to swerve around the pole, narrowly missing a wall of parked cars next to it, and regained control on the other side, finally bringing my car to a stop in an empty section of the parking lot. Then we walked back to the dorm and partied.
12. The first rule of government is: "Never trust the government"
I got a speeding ticket and had to go to a driver's course and paid for everything and all that jazz. Kept all the paper "just in case". 5 years later, the county decides to audit all unpaid tickets, failure to appears, and anything that essentially put a warrant out for your arrest and would "forgive" if you showed up and paid. Sure enough, I got a letter in the mail. I had to wait in line half a day so I go to the clerk and show them they screwed up. I learned to save any and all legal paperwork I get, whether it's a parking fine, or a judge signed letter of dismissal. I save them all because I don't trust the courts and never want to end up in jail because someone else screwed up.
11. That was pretty uncool
I booked a vacation for my wife's birthday in Cabo San Lucas months in advance. For some reason, as I was booking it I decided to get the trip insurance I had never done that before but time this I thought I better do it.
Our trip was to be in October I booked it in June. At the beginning of September, a Hurricane struck Cabo and did a lot of damage. I contacted the resort and they said they were not very badly affected. I left the reservation booked. The day before we were to fly to Cabo I checked the flights and everything was good to go. We got to the airport and as we were checking the woman checking in said "Oh there's a problem with your connecting flight" Yeah the problem was the connecting flight had been canceled over a month ago. Yeah, the company I had booked with neglected to tell us that little bit of info. I was able to recoup all of the money we spent because of the insurance.
Photo by Anugrah Lohiya from Pexels
10. What a wholesome story
I got divorced 11 years ago from a horrible woman when my son was only 7 years old. Once I got my life together and settled in I tried to get him to visit me as often as I could. ( due to work I had to live in a different state.)
Every single time I tried to make plans to fly him to see me or come see him, she would give me some horrible excuse about some medical thing he had, some event with school, or some emergency as to why he couldn't spend time with me. Or even sometimes she would just tell me to screw off and straight up say no. She knew I didn't live in town and I wasn't just going to show up and see him, so that gave her some power.
After the 9th or 10th time of that happening I said to myself, "you know what, just to be safe I should keep a record of all of this." So I made sure I saved every text message as well as every email conversation between her and I.
Over the years my son started to resent me thinking that I did not want to spend time with him. He became more distant and I was not able to communicate to him what was actually happening. At the age of 15 or 16 he stopped talking to me because he said that his depression was due to me not wanting to see him. I couldn't explain anything to him at all, so I emailed him and apologize and let him have his space.
Last year I was able to get through to him and convince him to let me come see him and spend the summer with me. I had legal visitation to do so, and told him that he needed to tell his mother he wanted to spend the summer with me. She tried to come up with an excuse, but he was resilient in asking and told her it was his choice to spend his summer break with me. She wanted to seem like a good person so she said yes finally. I drove 1100 miles to go pick him up and take the drive back with me to my state. I cleared it with child services, his mother, his grandparents and everybody was okay with it. I was going to fly him back in 2 months when his break was over, a week before he started school again.
On the drive back he expressed to me how upset he was with me about not being around in his life and not wanting to see him. We had a difficult conversation and I just let him tell me everything he was feeling. It was hard to hear, but I wanted to know where his headspace and his heart was.
So when we stopped the first night at a hotel, I pulled out my laptop and told him I wanted to show him something.
I knew it would hurt, but he had to know how much I cared about him and how hard his mother made it for me to see him. So I showed him every message and every email his mother had ever said to me about the lies she told that kept me from seeing him. I also showed him the legal documents from when I hired a lawyer to try to get custody of him and how difficult she made things. I showed him the communications between her and I and how downright mean she used to get to me when we communicated. I showed him the tweets from his now stepdad that was basically calling him a loser and saying how much he didn't like him. I showed him a part of his family that he had no idea existed.
Immediately his attitude towards me changed. We spent the entire summer together and had the most amazing time rebuilding a relationship. He came to where I lived and saw the clean and responsible life that I lead, and the hard work that I do to make a living. He started to realize that the life in the small town where he is at is very lacking and that his family there is toxic. The entire summer he spent with me he had zero bouts with depression, and actually stopped taking his medication for it. (his choice) He started to understand that his perceived depression was an environmental thing.
As a thank you for coming to see me, I canceled his flight home and gave him my old pickup truck as an early 18th birthday present and his first vehicle, and drove it back to his home state with him when the summer was over.
He graduates from high school this year and is going to be moving here where I live to do college.
Thank God I saved all those messages.
9. Starting to think I should get rental insurance
I took my first ever solo vacation when I was 24, to Ireland. When I got there, I was tired from the flight and confused by the car rental system (I had never rented a car before). I accidentally overpaid for the total coverage Cadillac insurance package. When I got to the place I was staying, I called my dad to see why I had paid so much. He called the car company, figured things out, and told me that the next day I could drive back to the airport and get my money back for a less crazy insurance package. At the last second, I figured I'd never driven in another country, much less switching to the opposite side of the road, so I decided to just keep the insurance.
Halfway through the trip, I made a boneheaded mistake, hit another car, and totaled my rental car. I didn't pay a penny.
8. Learn to laugh at yourself
One time my boss gave me a weekly metrics recording task that didn't make a lot of sense, but hey, the guy pays me. So I did it. Like a year later we're in a meeting discussing what metrics we use and don't use and this same boss sees it and laughs. "What idiot came up with that?"
Everyone chuckled but me. I froze.
"Come on, you can tell me, they won't get in trouble."
"Uhh... it was you sir."
Everybody laughed, including the manager, so I started breathing again. I liked that job.
7. Mother knows best
When I was 18, I went on vacation to Mexico with some friends (around 1995). My mother gave me a copy of my birth certificate before I left, because she was worried that they wouldn't let me back in the country. This was patently ridiculous, but I folded it up and stuck it in my wallet.
2 years later, I was applying for an expedited passport for an emergency trip abroad. I had everything that I needed to go to the County Recorder's office, but there was some problem with one of my identity documents.
Fortunately, I had a certified copy of my birth certificate in my wallet, and the passport request was successfully submitted.
Thanks, Mom.
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6. Friends don't ruin friends marriages
About 10 years ago when I was married, my wife's best friend kept on flirting with me. One time when she was being super aggressive, I recorded it on my cell phone. A few months later, she accused me of saying to her, the very things that she said to me. One listen from my wife to my phone completely exonerated me and shut her down completely. She was trying to ruin my marriage because hers was crappy.
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5. Some great advice here
About 11 years back I was in the military and stationed overseas. Not a combat zone but a nice duty station. I was a mechanic in our unit who was attached to another company in the battalion. Me and a few others maintained their vehicles.
Well, this company had some mighty big trailers that had these stabilizer legs that lowered down by a hydraulic screw. There was an upper arm, a lower arm, and the vertical up and down arm with a large foot on the end of it. The arms are held together with pins. Also, these arms weigh about 600-800 lbs each.
We were replacing the vertical arm and had to lift the upper arm to be able to move the lower arm and put the lower pin through it. I wanted to use the crane on the HEMTT wrecker to support the upper arm while we worked, but some higher ranking moron decided it would take too long and told us not to.
Cut to my good buddy holding the upper arm back and up on the trailer and me moving the lower arm up to place in the pin. I am bent down while attempting to line up the lower leg and place the pin in. I hear a "Look Out!" and do not have time to react as the upper arm comes down from near vertical and catches me on the side of the head. Splits my scalp open and knocks me to the ground.
Blood is everywhere as head wounds bleed like a stuck pig. But I am alive. Several staples later and I would be fine. Moral of the story do it the right way even if it takes an extra 5 min. Listen to that little voice. If my head had been 1 inch further inward my skull would have been popped like a watermelon.
4. Don't mess with Thor
One time, I unplugged my TV and game systems before leaving home ahead of a big storm. I came back to find that, everything I hadn't unplugged had fried completely.
I've had surge protectors not do their jobs before, so I thought it'd be a good idea to be safe. Also, all my appliances were covered under my renter's insurance policy, but none of my "entertainment media devices" would have, as I was not a student so I didn't really have a "need" for that stuff. I'd have gotten a check for my TV and stuff, which would have replaced it, but this was before the days of cloud game saving, so I would have lost all of my progress and a couple of games that came with the console when I bought it used.
3. Seems like a very vague law
When I was 20, I worked at a gas station. They had just changed the law so if the customer looked 40 and under, you had to ID them for smokes.
I was by myself, a lady came in and ordered a pack of camels. She looked roughly 45, so I didn't ask. I had this nagging feeling throughout the transaction that it would be a VERY good idea to ask. So before I took her money I kinda laughed and said, "Mind if I see your ID real quick? I'm really sorry, you're clearly old enough but they changed the law recently on who we have to ID."
She just looks at me and said, "I'm so glad you asked!" and flashed her work card at me. She was the inspector. If I didn't ask her, I would have been arrested and fined.
That was the day I learned to trust my gut. And I also suck at telling people's ages. She was 35.
2. This should go without saying: Wear your seatbelt
My friends and I were always giving another friend a hard time because he never wore his seatbelt while driving.
One night, he and another friend drove me home. It was pretty late and we were all tired. When they dropped me off I told him, "Use the seatbelt, you moron."
The next day, around lunchtime, I got a call that my two friends had been in a car accident, he had fallen asleep while driving my other friend's car. They hit a parked car, which hit the car in front of it and got stuck into a wall. The parked car acted as a ramp for their car, they flipped over and slid like 20 meters up side down.
For some reason, my friend had his seatbelt on for the first time ever and he didn't get injured, both of them crawled outside the car without a single scratch.
My buddy learned his lesson and his seatbelt is always on now, even when he's in the passenger seat.
roughmaps
1. Same Spider, Different Day
If lipped over my shoe and shook it, because I had found a spider in it the night before, just to make sure.
There was another spider in there.
