Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine Odd...but true things you've done.

I once rented a sound effects album from the local library during summer vacation. I stayed home one whole day and practiced moving the needle from the Motorcycle revving it's tires and taking off to the sound of a vehicle crashing.

Once my poor unsuspecting father got home from work, I waited to implement my plan.

He went to watch television in the den, and I started the record player in the living room up...the stereo being right by the front door.

He heard the motorcycle rev up, take off and then crash.

He ran full sprint to the front door and searched for the carnage...only to then realize I was laughing hysterically on the floor some 5 feet away. Never forgave me for that one...cause he wishes he had thought of it himself.

I wore a wig for several years. It was a nice style, and stayed on the old bean with some tape and stuff.

Anyhoo...we went swimming one day at a public beach. Seeing that I was getting the thing cleaned the next day, I decided to test out the ability to wear it in water. I swam out a bit and dove under.

The wig stayed on, but got pretty heavy with all the water it absorbed. I rose up out of the water and like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible, took my wig off(okay, he took masks off, but it was basically the same motion).

The thing is, I had come up out of the water right in front of the only other person on the beach. She was about 50 feet down from us, and was off the beach as fast as she could pack up her stuff and hoof it up the beach.

I wonder how long she told that story.

I took part in a movie sex scene. Back when I was working in film, there was a film with a scene where a couple is having sex in a car and they had me crouch behind the car pushing it up and down by the bumper. For the close-up shot, I was pushing down on the hood, but I had to watch the actor's ass to time my movements with his thrusts.

I was also in a shower scene, but that's another story...

Who was the actor? Did he have a cute ass? Maybe you can tell me the movie title?

When I visited Berlin in 1977, with several others from my senior-year high-school German class, I decided that I was going to see more of East Berlin than the tour guides were going to permit. So at an opportune moment late in the afternoon, I split off from the group. (I wasn't missed. The three girls I traveled with, one a former girlfriend, hied it back to West Berlin to go clubbing and manhunting.)

I saw a few corners of the socialist "showcase," dreary and ruinous as it was, that ended up being fascinating. When I returned back through Checkpoint Charlie to the West, two teenaged girls from London happened to go through with me. The passport control officer said "Guten Tag," and they were terrified! I told them that he was merely saying "Hello," and I translated for them.

The best parts of East Berlin were being able to drink like a German and leave like an American, I'd have to say.

Now I want to return some day and do what I never thought I could do in my lifetime: stand under the Brandenburg Gate, with no Wall around it, and watch the traffic flow by. And I'll return to the Lokals I patronized on the Kurfuerstendamm (West) and Alexanderplatz (East), to hoist some glasses of Berliner Weisse and celebrate the vagaries of history.

I lived in Austalia when I was a kid and I got to hold a koala and climb Ayers Rock. Both things not commonly done, especially nowadays.

I'm generally cautious to a fault. However, I have done a couple of risky (stupid) things. In high school, two friends and I drove across the border from Canada into the United States to smoke the dope one friend had. We were afraid we'd get in too much trouble if we got caught in Canada. (Duh? what's the penalty for taking drugs across the border??) In university I went skydiving three times (free fall - no static line). While scuba diving, I reached out and touched a sleeping reef shark in a cave in the Tetiaroa Lagoon (Brando's island in Tahiti).

I post on a message board as an ID of the opposite gender.

I've walked around Times Square without any pants or underwear on.

...that's 'cause I was wearinga kilt, tho.

Greybird, my Berlin trip was '91... an interesting time to see the transition. Besides Berlin, I went to my grandmother's hometown in the Harz Mountains, a stone's throw east of the old border. In both places, staying with family who'd grown up and lived in the old East was an eye-opener.

Tease *wink, wink*

It was called "Made Men" -- some low budget mob movie that never made it to theaters. The actor wasn't anyone you (or I) would remember. I can't comment on the "cuteness" of his ass though - I don't notice such things...

Not so much "odd" as "stupid" -- I was swinging my keys as I walked home from the bus stop tonight, and I whacked myself in the forehead. I have an interesting bruise.

My trip to Berlin was in '82. I was 17 and with a group - but we were in Deutschland for 7 weeks and not allowed to speak English. The trip included a week in Berlin, and 1 day in East Berlin. Over 20 years later, and what do I remember? Those Germans sure can cook! Best food I've ever had in my life!

When I went to visit my cousins in Poland, I visited Auschwitz, a salt mine, and an old jewish cemetary. Yup all the hot spots One of my co-workers at the time started calling me "Salty" because of it.

Actually the salt mine was very interesting. They had dioramas and here are some pictures of a huge chapel cavern Salt mine

The cemetary was cool too. It was from the 1800s and was overgrown, but also still being used. (there was an effort to reclaim it) But it seemed like you were walking through there woods and there were all these gravestones around.

Grey and lance,
You both had German in high school? So did I!
But I remember about 4 sentences of it at this point. I always wanted to go see Germany, but my school didn't arrange any class trips during my 4 years of "Deutsch" learnin'.


I cannot think of many "odd" things I've done in my life, so I'll have to go with a "stupid/odd" one: The fine day after school I got off a moving car and broke my arm. I was sitting on the trunk and a buddy was sitting on the hood, and we were trying to convince some girl friends not to leave. The driver revved up the engine and took off down the street anyway (thinking she was funny). I was sliding off the car and had nothing to hold on to, so I jumped, believing I'd have more control of my body than if I actually fell. Not so much. I was lucky though, if I'd jumped about 2 seconds later, I'd have played "tag" with a parked car (and undoubtedly lost).

I've been thrown out of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.

Wasn't me; it was the howls of people I was with.

We'd begun beyond the Capitol, singing the entire album, "Pink Floyd - The Wall," and finished up just as we reached the tops steps in front of Abe. The guys, a bunch of big lugs from Queens, spontaneously howled (some sort of Queens ritual, perplexed me surmised), and a guard stepped out from nowhere and ordered us out.

Well, it's like this. I was best man at my best friend's wedding. About an hour before the wedding, I was wandering around the chapel doing some last minute stuff, and I was carrying around this big manilla envelope which contained the wedding certificate and the scads of other paperwork people have to have to get married. The photographer was in the chapel getting solo shots of the wedding party, and he said, "Hey Lance, c'mere, I need to get your picture." So I walked over and sat this envelope (thick with important papers) down on a glass tabletop I spied out of the corner of my eye. Turned out it wasn't a glass tabletop - it was a basin full of holy water and the envelope started sinking like a stone! (I see a smooth reflective surface on a stone base, I think glass, not water!) Lemme tell ya, despite the air conditioning, I started sweating bullets. I grabbed the envelope and started pulling out the papers as fast as I could! Luckily, nothing inside got damaged, but that envelope died a hero...

My friend Jeff accused me of adding a Baptist touch to the Catholic ceremony. When Colleen and I got married, we were seriously thinking about having our wedding certificate laminated...

Ouch!

And I thought my bro-in-law had a rough one.

With my sister's (second) wedding, the bridal party was stuck in traffic! Someone else had a nasty accident, tied up traffic... anyway, the rest of us at the wedding site were sitting around wondering, and Adrian (the groom) was getting more and more nervous. . Adrian's sis told me I was the hostage if she didn't show...

Luckily for all (especially Adrian), the club wasn't set to serve booze til after the nuptuals.

today's thuderstorms and sideways lightning reminded me of an incident last year, when I almost drove into a tornado. It was night; couldn't see it... luckily, in a way.

Driving home from covering a meeting, I drove through the village of Coxsackie (which, on an odd side note, has a virus named after it), at which point the thunderstorm I was driving through had calmed. On my way out of the village, the wind and rain picked up strongly... half a minute later, the small roadside trees were leaning sideways, branches were airborn, it was hailing, and my windshield was freezing up (in July!)! I mananged to turn around and creep back toward the village, barely able to see the road, barely aware of the branches and garbage can lids I was driving over, until it was relatively calm again.

A house 50 feet of the road from where I turned around was lifted off its foundations... not that I saw that til the next morning.

Bump!

I just had a hoot reading over this thread. I'm going to bed trying to think of one odd but true thing I've done in my over-cautious life.

On my 19th birthday, my best friend took me to a party with his coworkers. I hadn't done anything all day to mark my turning-legal drinking-age (O Canada!) and I was living away from any other friends and family at the time.

All of a sudden, the lights went down, the tune of Happy Birthday started to ring out, and a candlelit cake was brought out...only it was all for someone else!

The party was a surprise party for the boss. Well, he wasn't the only one surprised. My best friend (who by the way, is still somehow my best friend some 16 years later) didn't see the irony in it all.

What's the definition of odd, here, exactly?