Fun Fact Friday!!

* Once, when I was a kid, we went to some fair and saw a *magician.*  This magician pulled out a Handkerchief and wove his Magic Wand over it, and when he whipped The Handkerchief away, a dove fell to the floor with a resounding thud.  A bunch of kids started wailing and he told them all that the dove was very tired and that his *assistant* was going to take it back stage and wake it up, or whatever.  A few moments later, The Assistant came out with the *revived bird.*  What made this moment so memorable to me, was my mother and her friend, standing behind us, practically busting a gut laughing at the magician with the poor, tired, dove.  I think that I remember actual snorting.

* Along with my Inappropriate Laughing Mental Glitch comes the insane tendency to laugh when someone is over-the-top, irrationally angry with me or anyone around me.  Like, if someone is telling me off and really going at it, I have to hold in my laughter.  Even when it's completely unfunny.

* I remember one time, when I was in high school, I had this teacher with a chronically dislocated shoulder and a notoriously bad temper.  He was screaming at the guy who sat beside me in the next row.  He was red-faced and spitting as he yelled.  He was also poking him in the chest.  The rest of the class was in a stunned-silent stupor and I sat there, hoping to hell that my shaking shoulders looked traumatized.

* I was involved in my first-ever car accident when a very strange woman ran a red light and hit me broad side.  I was all of 18 and I completely flipped my shit.  I don't know why but I lost my mind and yelled and screamed at her.  She wanted me to let her go home and get her husband to say that he was driving the car or whatever and some guy on the scene (who was chuckling at my over-the-top, irrational anger) shook his head 'no, don't let her go,' and so I didn't.  I had calmed down by the time the cops came, and I had begun to be embarrassed and ashamed of my behavior (not TOO ashamed, though, because I was young and stupid and felt somewhat justified at the time.) They found that she didn't have a license and they wrote her up and I called a tow truck and blah blah blah.  Instead of taking off from work, I went to the restaurant. When my mom dropped me off, I saw the car that hit me sitting there, in the parking lot. And WHO DO YOU THINK WAS WAITING IN MY SECTION?  

* I didn't take them as customers.  I hid from them for the entire time that they were there and they never saw me.  I learned a BIG lesson that night. And it involved the word: [humiliation] humility.

* For the MIL dinner I am making pasta with asparagus and black olives (only EIGHT MORE CANS TO GO!!) and a strawberry shortcake(ish) dessert.

* One memory that stands out in my mind so well from grade school was when this normally very quiet girl flipped her shit on a bunch of us in gym class.  I can't really remember what she said, exactly, but she was telling us off in a big, major way.  The gist of it was that we were more popular than her and her friends and that we were all basically assholes.  I was surprised, as I'd never, ever considered myself more popular than anyone at that school (well, maybe those two kids who always got picked on).  I didn't laugh that time, but I did come away with a new found respect for her--the quiet, shy girl, who was packing a secret can of whoop-ass.

* That girl is one of my Facebook friends, but I'm too chickenshit to ask if she remembers that flip-out.

Comments

[mimi]

Wow. You attract freaky shit. It's amazing. Um, it would never occur to me to go out for lunch after having a car accident. CRAZY.

[A New Duck]

My friend, I WAS that whoop-ass girl. Except that I never whooped any ass until *after* I graduated from high school. And then all those years of ass-whoop repression bottled up inside of me came out and I became the biggest ass-whooper around. Um, chronically. Twenty years later I'm still waiting for the ass-whoop to get out of my system.

I think I'm now going to write an entire blog post about this.

[Shelly]

These are awesome. I LOVE that the woman who hit you ended up in your section. Hilarious.

[-R-]

The lady was driving without a license, drove through a red light, hit your car, wanted to leave the scene, and wanted you to lie to the police? I don't understand why you feel bad about yelling at her. I also think it would have been funny to show up as she and her husband were leaving the restaurant and say, "Hope you enjoyed the meal!" She totally would have thought you messed with her food, even though you didn't. But I am feeling mean today, so you should probably just ignore me.

I like Swistle's idea for the Facebook friend.

[Manic Mommy]

They only write you up for driving without a license...and they you say "hey, let's go to lunch"? Remind me to write about the time I was broadsided while TEST DRIVING a Jetta. Good times.

[Keila]

I LOVE THESE... SInce the theme is FLIPPING your shit... I will give you one.

It is also a "Opening a can of Whoop-ass"...

In H.S. I had a "friend" that I was part of the girls I sat with during lunch. She was not my best friend or even a good friend, JUST a friend. Reason was she was a little on the mean side and liked to make fun of everyone in MEAN name calling ways. So there was this girl that sat next to her in lunch and everyday this frined of mine would go off on her in Spanish.. Calling her awful names all in Spanish, she would laugh and laugh, the girl would be quite because obviously she didn't understand spanish and I would just look at my "friend" and shake my head and say "that is not very nice" in spanish. She would always say "O come on I am just joking".. TO ME when you call someone the N word - it is not funny.

SO lets skip down to June, last day of lunch and my friend decides to go off with a bang, WELL GUESS WHAT FOLKS.. The girl that was called the N word along with many other things turned around and OPENED a huge can of whoop ass on my "friend" in spanish.. She HAPPENED to be Cuban!

I LAUGHED and LAUGHED AND LAUGHED for DAYS!!!! FOR DAYS!!!

[Swistle]

SO much good stuff here.

I think you could ask her about it if you called it "opening a can of whoop-ass" rather than "flipping your shit." You could say you've always remembered how amazing that was, or something like that. Betcha she remembers it VIVIDLY, and if it was way outside her usual behavior she might be glad to hear that someone remembers it as a positive thing.