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What’s something that you weren’t supposed to see/hear, but did?
Maybe you ended up on an email chain you weren’t supposed to. Maybe you stumbled across a gift from your partner in its hiding place. Maybe you heard a friend talking about you without them realizing you were there?
This can be about something serious, funny, sad, lighthearted, etc. Anything goes.
Tell us the story: What did you see/hear? How did it impact you/others? How did you feel about it?
Without providing too much detail; happened last Spring... I received a call from my neighbor that something weird was happening at the end of the cul-de-sac. I walked out there, hearing somebody dragging something heavy into the woods next to my house. I walked to the end of the cul-de-sac and there was a car parked there, backed up to the woods. A moment later, a man came out of the woods and claimed he hit a deer with his car. He drove away shortly thereafter. I walked into the woods and found the dead body of a young woman who had been murdered within the past 10 minutes.
So, yeah... I ended up with severe panic attacks, hallucinations, inability to sleep, not feeling safe in my house, and in PTSD therapy for a while, and I'm still struggling with intrusive thoughts and occasional moments of severe dread. There were others involved who experienced similar things. It didn't help that the police/forensics teams don't clean up. I was left to scrub a 50' trail of blood off of the street and scrub down blood splatter all over the mailboxes etc, in large part so that my kids wouldn't get into it or see it.
Edit: I was able to provide info to the authorities that led to the prompt arrest of the perpetrator.
I am so sorry for the trauma you've gone through. I hope you're on the path to recovery.
Have you found that you occasionally see the event in a new light or think of a different aspect of it, and that random realization re-traumatizes you in some way?
I went through a series of extremely scary experiences as a young teenager (a blatant kidnapping attempt, followed by two cases of being secretly stalked by strangers over a period of hours, which I believe may have also been aborted kidnapping attempts — all within the space of about a year), and for some reason, I occasionally get jolted by new what-if's that lay me low again for a few days.
For some reason, right after these events happened, I did not think at all about what could have happened if they had kidnapped me. I was completely focused on how scary my actual experience had been and being on the watch for a repeat (none of the perpetrators were caught, and one of the events happened almost right in front of my home).
But months or years later, I suddenly wondered if I they would have raped me if they'd managed to grab me, and that thought really messed me up for a while.
Then, years after that, I wondered if they would have murdered me after raping me, and that messed me up again.
And then more than a decade later, I suddenly wondered if it was actually a lot more impersonal than that and I would have been sold into sex slavery, and that idea really messed me up.
Following that (again interspersed by years), I found myself wondering if they ever successfully caught someone else — and then years later again, what could have happened to this hypothetical victim.
I ask this because, when I read your comment, I immediately thought of all kinds of what-ifs along these lines that must because extremely traumatizing to you — and then I realized that maybe you haven't actually finished processing all those what-ifs.
Thanks for your comment. I'm sorry to hear of the experiences you had - they sound absolutely terrifying.
I was lucky enough to make it to mid-life without ever experiencing anything particularly traumatic like this. I mean... I was on a plane that almost crashed once and it gave me a fear of flying for over 20 years, but that seemed like a situational fear. This event created more of a global trauma/fear response that was not confined to a particular place or situation.
Immediately after it happened, I guess I was in shock for 24 hours or so, and then when it set it, my mind went absolutely crazy. It replayed the situation 1000 times per minute, with an endless stream of what-if scenarios, regrets, feelings of shame, terror, sadness, etc. I realized shortly thereafter that I needed to seek treatment ASAP and I am lucky enough to be friends with some people who helped me find the proper treatment.
What I was told is that there were so many troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with PTSD that the research into how to treat it had dramatically improved in recent years. It boiled down to: medicate away the symptoms for 6 weeks (which is not PTSD but the "acute trauma response phase") and you're far more likely to avoid chronic PTSD. I hated the medication and stopped it probably a bit too early, but I would say that it was 95% effective. There was a bit of a stress rebound when I came off of it and then about 2 months later I was having some weird panic triggers, but now they've mostly faded.
However, rarely does a day go by when it doesn't replay in my mind at least once. Now, however, it's more like watching it on TV than being there in person, if that makes any sense. I guess it's more of an analytical replay than an emotional replay.
I live in the house that I grew up in and the street is a calm and peaceful one. I spent my childhood playing in the woods where I found the body. Honestly, I can't even really type that without tearing up. The events completely shattered the nostalgia, serenity, and personal connection that I have with the area where it happened. I don't think I'll ever get that back. I've tried to walk back to the place where I found the body and... I just can't do it. Not yet. Maybe eventually. Maybe not. We've thought a lot about moving since this all happened. I previously never would have considered it and while I still have an emotional pull to the location, it's more wistful... like remembering a good friend from high school who I haven't seen in a long time versus a visceral active connection. It may sound strange, but I think I mourn the loss of that more than anything.
It's tough to move forward from stuff like this and I wasn't even a direct victim of a crime. The woman murdered was a 23 year old mother of 2 young children. It appears to have been somewhat random. Neither the victim nor the perpetrator lived anywhere near here - they just happened to come down the street. I'm so sorry for those children who will grow up without their mother.
About 25 years ago, I was living in Vancouver and living my best life as a Research Assistant / mildly useful handyman / beach bum / person who leeches off their more successful girlfriend. I was learning Cantonese from said girlfriend, and while I never got fluent, I could have bad conversations with people. I have mostly lost it since - use it or lose it is so true - but at the time certainly spoke enough to go to a restaurant and order, or to have a conversation as one might have with a three year old. Of course, my girlfriend taught me a lot of naughty stuff because we were 20 and that was hilarious.
One day I was in dire need of a haircut, because I was looking a little bit too beach bum, and the end of my gloriously long mane was very frazzled, so I went to a local place that my girlfriend liked. It was totally empty except for the two hairdressers, who were both petite 30-ish Chinese ladies.
It is notable that I had been working out a lot - I was swimming for a couple of hours a day, working 15-20 hours of physical labor a week, riding my bike most places, and my girlfriend was out for 12 hours shifts doing science (she was running an experiment at the particle accelerator), and I knew exactly one other couple who lived in Vancouver, so I had a lot of free time, which I mostly used to lift weights. I am a big guy, but at that point I was a big muscular guy with a lot of curly reddish-brown hair and a big beard and a pretty good tan for someone who tends more to hiss at the sun and stay in his basement. In comparison to these two tiny ladies, I was an absolute giant.
They ushered me in and got to work, all the while chatting in Cantonese. They washed my hair and cut it, trimmed my beard, etc. The entire time, they were talking about how huge I was, and wondering about things that were very graphic and sexual - every naughty thing you could imagine someone saying in that situation, and probably more that I couldn't understand. Also to be clear, I'm not a person that typically immediately elicit lust from someone else based on looks alone (I'm a 10/10 personality in person though), so this was a strange occurrence.
I mostly just kept my eyes closed and tried not to laugh.
When we finished, I got up, thanked them with my best formal Cantonese thank you, and watched them turn absolutely crimson. One of the ladies just straight up left and the other had to stammer through the conversation of taking my money. I thanked her for the pleasant conversation, gave her the biggest tip I could afford (oops double entendre) and left feeling pretty great about myself.
I had a similar(ish) language-based experience when I was visiting Europe with my wife several years ago. We had a flight scheduled to go from Geneva to Rome at 09:00, but we ended up missing it (PSA: make sure to familiarize yourself with military time if you're used to AM and PM and decide to visit Europe) and had to book a last minute train instead. As a result my wife and I couldn't book seats next to each other, so I ended up sitting next to 3 young women (it was two sets of seats facing each other with me and one of the women on one side facing the other two).
All three women were speaking in English, and I guess they assumed I was a local and couldn't understand them, because they started openly commenting about the other passengers (including me) in ways that I assume they wouldn't have if they thought anyone else knew what they were saying. I don't remember specifically what they said about me, but it definitely was not a flattering experience like the one you had.
At some point my wife came down the aisle to find me and asked (in English) if I wanted to switch seats with her, because she had one with a bit more leg room and thought I'd be more comfortable. I said something like "Yeah, sounds great, can you show me where it is?" When I glanced back at the women as we walked away they were all staring at us open-mouthed.
My wife later told me that she ended up having a great time sitting with and talking to them (after they expressed their horror and asked her to apologize to me for them for anything insulting they may have said), and the seat I traded for was much more comfortable for me, so it all worked out in the end.
Wow, it's gutsy to presume that someone in Europe doesn't speak English!
From my experience I learned to always err on the side of "there's a person nearby who may unexpectedly speak this language" no matter which language in which I am conversing, and I'm guessing that the girls on the train did as well.
ps. military time for life, all the clocks in my office and on my devices use it.
Also known simply as "time" in most of the world (:
Funny that you guys call it military on not like 24 hour clock etc.
something something Americans something somethingWell, to be fair, I didn't call it that, @rudism did. I would usually call it a "24-hour clock" but also recognize military time, railway time, or continental time.
Also, I'm not US American. AM / PM is also prevalent in a bunch of other countries - every North American country, all the Caribbean countries I've been to, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, and I feel like Great Britain does as well, though I haven't been there in 20 years, so I could be wrong.
Here in the UK, we do a similar thing with 24 clock as we do with metric, where people randomly swap between both depending on many factors.
Military time is even slightly different from the way the rest of the world reads time, I think. For example "7:00" would be read as "seven o'clock" in a normal 24-hour system, but it would be read as "zero seven-hundred" in military time. I think it's done that way to minimize the opportunities for misperceptions like the NATO Phonetic Alphabet ("alpha hotel foxtrot niner").
In their defense, they were speaking quietly enough that I was probably the only one they had to worry about overhearing, and out of habit I was also explicitly pretending to pay zero attention to their conversation.
I also have everything set to military time across the board (wristwatch, phones, computers, etc.) so it was a pretty big face-palm moment for me when my wife showed me the tickets and asked "you don't suppose they mean AM on the time here do you?" (several hours after the flight).
While I try not to enjoy the misfortune of others this did cause me to chuckle out loud in commiseration.
21:00AM would be a trip.
I've had moments like that where people speaking Russian assumed I didn't and would say horrible things around me, or about me. and I would always remind them that they should never assume those around them don't speak the language.
If this weren't Tildes I would be completely calling bullshit now, so I'm now actually surprised there are people like this.
It's not even the only time I've experienced this exact thing, it's just the most funny. With a different girlfriend several years after this, I met her parents, and they expressed displeasure to her about me in Greek... but at the time I'd just finished an ancient greek course, and then tried to at least learn a little modern greek because that seemed actual useful. Her mom didn't like how pale I was, and I was a few years younger. That time I did immediately start in and say "I actually understood that, just so you know" which actually helped quite a bit.
I think it's pretty dependent on where you are; in Vancouver, very few of the white people speak any kind of chinese, so probably every other time they'd ever spoken "in code" they didn't get caught. Or the person who caught them wasn't impish enough to then spring it on them afterwards.
When I was 6 or so, I went snooping through my parents closet and discovered a sweet space shuttle Lego set. "Brilliant!" I thought, "I'll get started on this right away."
I knew I was in the wrong since I took my illicit contraband to my closet in my room and began constructing in secret. My parents grew curious about where I was, and I still have a vivid memory of them opening the closet door and everyone having a surprised Pikachu look.
I received that Christmas gift in front of my entire family, wrapped in a plastic shopping bag, and had to explain why to them. My grandparents had a picture of me with the completed set on their cabinet for the next 20 years until they passed away.
I used to work at a bank and the guy in the cubicle next to me happened to have the same first and last name as a high-up executive in the same bank. He got an email one day that was clearly not intended for him, so he called the floor manager over. Our bank had a colour-code system for how sensitive emails were: red, orange, yellow, green. This email was purple, a colour we didn't even know existed in this system. The floor manager read a few lines, turned to him and said "I shouldn't even be seeing this. Delete that email and never speak about this again."
Whatever he might have glimpsed in that email, he wouldn't tell me.
Their job security should be pretty airtight.
This happened to someone on my team at Nokia. He got an email about the Microsoft acquisition of Nokia a few months before it was announced.
Amazingly he had the presence of mind to not say anything to anyone around him, he replied to the email saying what had happened. A few hours later a lawyer arrived from the London office with a NDA / various other legal stuff to sign. He did that and had to keep it secret from everyone until it eventually happened. Absolutely brutal!
That’s wild.
At work, I semi-regularly get emails intended for someone else with the same name as me, just a slightly different (equally common) spelling, and a different middle initial, but the same last name. (Like Sean B. Smith vs Shawn E. Smith).
Luckily we work in very different departments, but are at similar levels of the corporate ladder - so I haven’t seen anything too important. But about once a month I have to reply to an email and say “Hey, I think you meant to send this to the other guy - I’m in X department not Y department.
Mine is pretty light-hearted, and very recent.
My wife mentioned to me last week that one of my Christmas presents would be arriving in the mail, so if a large package arrived while I was working I should just bring it in and not open it. I never heard the delivery driver knock (or they just didn't, which is common), so when I went to greet my wife at the end of the day I also happened to see her carrying a large box with a very prominent logo on the sides. I only asked for one item from that company, so I immediately recognized it and now I know what I'm in for. She knows that I know, and now I feel bad that her big surprise for me is ruined.
If you want to know what I think it is
I've wanted to get into blacksmithing for the past 15 years (since middle school/jr. high), and now I'm slowly assembling what I need for a simple mobile forge that I can carry/wheel out to the grill area of my apartment complex. The box my wife brought in had Vevor on all sides, and the only item from Vevor on my list is a basic single-burner propane forge.
The wait is agonizing!
What's with all the damn blacksmith's on this site!? :P
@mat and @AugustusFerdinand are as well.
p.s. My last name, Fabbro, is Italian for Blacksmith. ;)
I partially blame shows like Forged in Fire and channels like Alec Steele, where they show off impressive and fancy builds. I admittedly got interested in blacksmithing because I wanted to make swords, but over the years I've realized that I want to make a sword but then mostly stick with more utilitarian items. Making my own crucible/wootz steel (the real Damascus steel, none of this pattern-welded crap) is a dream I'd love to try sometime, but obviously I just need to get the basics down first.
Yeah, a lot of people have joined the hobby through the show. I wasn't even aware it was a thing when I started blacksmithing, nor any youtube channels about it.
My wife was looking for classes for a new hobby of hers, found a blacksmith class knowing that I'd mentioned years before of being interested in doing so to continue my metalworking knowledge, and sent it to me. Signed up and during the first class several of the other students were talking about it and asked me a question and I just said "What's Forged in Fire?" and got the weirdest look like I'd asked who The Beatles were. My teacher has a few former students that have been on the show though, so good for them.
I just like to make stuff, typically functional stuff (zero interest in knives/blades at all, although I need to make a hand axe to do some pruning at the new house), and friends along the way. Thankfully have been able to do that along with some teaching (hopefully more of that soon) and helping to diversify* the hobby locally.
*
For those unaware, but as can be imagined if putting some thought into it. Blacksmithing has a bit of what I call a straight-white-man problem. Often it is a right-wing-straight-white-man problem.
I've been around blacksmithing events where no-one batted an eye at the people doing
confederate reenactmentscosplaying as civil war era racists at the same time, overheard someone describe their political ideology as "somewhat to the right of Hitler", watched instructors that seem enthusiastic about anyone taking their class while also deadnaming students and purposefully using the wrong pronouns despite (in one particular case) the palm sized button on her apron that said she/her, saw a great deal on an anvil get turned down by another student because they "weren't going to go to the capital-N-hard-R side of town", etc. etc.That said, it is changing and trending younger as a lot of the problems above are old fuckers that die off or get pushed out of groups that just want to have a hobby without hate. I've made great friends that respect their fellow humans, are of ages across the gamut, and of all walks of life from folk that just want to hit hot steel and let everyone live their life to diehard punk rockers that are deeply engrained in harm-reduction and suicide prevention communities because sometimes a mosh pit is a way to vent the frustration that can't be expressed at home and the only thing keeping a fellow punk from a fentanyl overdose to make the pain go away is a friend that listens, a hug, and a promise made to see them at the next show.
Over the past few years I've had more women, POC, and openly trans students than my instructor has had over the past couple of decades. Found out just before I moved out of Texas that apparently that diversification is somewhat my fault. Which was weird...
That is a wild statement to make with a straight face.
I mean, with those politics, the face wouldn't be queer.
I'll see myself out
Fae, there's a long list of reasons that if we ever meet I'm giving you a big hug and that line is one of them.
This thread has unlocked some buried memories from my high school years... I remember having to come up with "careers" I was interested in and, while most were BS pulled from Google for the sake of the assignment, I remember thinking I was genuinely interested in blacksmithing. The problem is that I am 4'10" and 90 lbs... how much of the physical aspect, do you think, should play into whether I look into learning this down the road?
(I realize that probably nothing is stopping me from trying, especially if there are classes available, but I have plenty of other less-physically-intensive hobbies that I COULD get into if #1 is too difficult, y'know?)
Absolutely none. I have taught and met blacksmiths of your size and stature.
Blacksmiths may generally be seen as large burly men, but that is not a requirement at all. The tools you will use, you will make/modify to fit your hands. 98% of the time you are going to swing a hammer that's only 1.5-2lbs. 98% of the time the metal you will be hitting will weigh around the same or less. Strength is also not really a factor as it's not really about how hard you hit something, it's about how fast you hit something thanks to the magic of physics!
Force = Mass x Acceleration
So it's not the size of the hammer, it's how (fast) you swing it.
Anvils will be the hardest part for you as they will weigh as much as you do (or much much more), but once you have it placed you generally won't move it again.
You and Banazir have absolutely made my day. I even see there appear to be classes available in the city I'm relocating to next year... if that pans out I'll be sure to report back!
To second what's already been said, immense strength isn't a critical requirement for most projects. I was on the smaller side in the class that I took, and I took the instructors' advice and took a smaller hammer than most. By the end of the day, I had completed all my projects and still felt like I could keep going for hours, while the bigger guys were worn out and had to stop.
With a proper setup, conservation of energy will help you keep going for hours. A proper anvil will let the hammer rebound on each stroke, and you shouldn't need to constantly exert effort to hit the metal hard enough to shape it. If you really need force, learning to use the length of the handle will give you enough leverage to swing fast, and you just have to make sure to hit the right spot at that point.
Don't let your high school self limit your dreams. While I don't know if you can make a career out of blacksmithing, you can definitely get a worthwhile hobby out of it. I still show off the beginner projects I made, and I can't wait to make more.
LOL, yeah my question was a bit rhetorical, since I already guessed as much. I watch various blacksmiths, and sword/knife makers on YouTube too. My personal fav is Tod's Workshop since he focuses primarily on making historically accurate recreations, and I'm a huge history nerd. ;)
If you ever make something, be sure to post about it here on Tildes! Every year @kfwyre also organizes the Timasomo (Tildes Make Something Month) event, where mat and AugustusFerdinand have posted several of their own hobby projects over the years too.
It's funny, I lurked here for a year before getting a signup link, and it's been half a year since then, and I never actually looked into Timasomo. Granted, this year I was too busy getting married to make anything, but most of my creations have just involved me finding someone else's designs on Thingiverse and 3D printing those.
Thanks for the channel recommendation! If you want another good one to watch, I highly recommend Torbjorn Ahman. His work is simple but high quality, and he almost always shows his tools at work in following videos. Plus, his workshop makes me so green with envy that the Hulk looks pale.
Tod doesn't show most of the actual blacksmithing on his channel, although he used to occasionally post that kind of content on his blog. His channel is more for medieval weaponry experimentation, education, and entertainment purposes, so I don't know if it will be the kind of channel you're looking for. But I enjoy it. :)
And thanks, I will definitely check Torbjorn Ahman out. The fact that the first video is of him making a Hori Hori is a good sign though, since I love mine. Most versatile gardening/landscaping tool ever!
p.s. Congrats on getting married! :)
Alec is local to me, and he is the reason I own an anvil. He's exactly the same person in person as he is on his channel.
I really don't like Forged in Fire though.
Oh yeah, no hate on Alex himself. I just don't like the types of projects he does. He spends (or used to spend) multiple 15-20 minute videos on making a billet of pattern-welded steel before making the actual knife. It looks pretty, but I'm much more interested in simpler techniques and maybe something like san mai for knives and axes at most.
I'd still take the chance to learn from him if I got it though. From what I gather, being able to forge weld reliably takes a good amount of experience, and he's got plenty of that.
He hasn't been doing the long series of Damascus-making stuff for a while now, not since Youtube stopped pushing people to upload daily (which is why we were getting so much filler from so many creators a few years back), also there's been less of the very long projects since he shut down the Montana shop and him and Will Stelter went separate ways (on good terms). Will's channel is excellent, he's such a good bladesmith. If I ever create something even a fraction as beautiful as the things he makes I'd be very happy indeed.
Alec is currently doing a very interesting series about making titanium damascus. Actually getting into some properly hardcore metallurgy on this one, it's very interesting and well worth going back to if you haven't seen his stuff for a while.
I've never liked Damascus for much, personally. It's showy but I don't really see the point, functionally. 95% of my knives are plain stainless steel because that just works better in almost all situations. San mai is about as far as I'd go but I am not really that much of a blacksmith and would probably buy in pre-made billets for that kind of thing.
I missed having blacksmithing classes with Alec by only a few months - by the time I had time/money he'd just stopped doing them - but I have met him a couple of times.
IDK if they're also a blacksmith, but "fabbro" in cfabbro's name is Italian for blacksmith.
☝️
Heh. I apparently edited the p.s. part into my last comment after you already started writing your reply. I'm not actually a blacksmith, but one of my earliest paternal ancestors clearly was though.
It also sounds like someone who works in a machine shop and wears a backwards baseball cap, a "fabrication bro" if you will.
ಠ_ಠ ;)
This is what I think when I see it. "Si, fab bro 👍"
All that and I never even read to whom I was replying 🤦♂️
While I appreciate the compliment, I consider myself far from a blacksmith.
I turn perfectly good steel into very heavy pieces of trash 90% of the time, occasionally that trash is useful for things like hitting/holding other perfectly good steel so that I can turn it into trash as well.
My last name means blacksmith and I've never even banged two pieces of metal together, so you're already more of a blacksmith than I... no matter how gnarly your creations currently look. But given how much effort you seem to put into your automotive endeavours, I imagine it won't be long until you're blacksmithing your own engine parts! ;)
Engine parts would probably be a hard thing to pull off blacksmithing, but there's a simultaneous rat/hot rod group project discussion amongst the guys and I that might be in the cards for suspension/frame/body parts.
Plus, you're in Canada. Forges are hot. If anything you have more of a reason to live up to your last name than I did in Texas summers if only to keep yourself warm.
Craftsmanship has an allure greater than that of the open seas.
Personally I'm into eood working, and I'd love to get started with Metal Working, but that requires space I can't afford currently.
I don't even have space for woodworking machinery so I have to make do with whatever hand tools I got on said hand.
The surprise already happened, but the enjoyment you get from it has been extended by weeks!
I was probably 10 or 12. I woke up and went to the living room, where I saw my mother telling some very intimate and sensitive things about myself to a crowd so large there was someone sitting on the window. I'm not telling what she said them but it was very disturbing to watch her making my life into a spectacle. And it really was an spectacle, the atmosphere was that of a theater. I pretended I didn't see anything, went back to bed. As an adult, my mother conveniently "forgot* all about it. It happened.
My mom also conveniently forgot something horrible she said about me as a child, that I likely shouldn't have overheard. I've told this story before, but I was in 2nd grade and was at the parent teacher conference with my parents and my teacher (lol duh), but I was reading and supposedly not paying attention to what was happening, but I very clearly remember my teacher at the time telling my parents I should get tested for learning disabilities because I still confused my b's and d's in 2nd grade, even though I was reading at like a 6th grade level, and my mom very clearly stood up and shouted that I don't have a learning disability, I'm just stupid.
I've gone through a lot of therapy, and I can very calmly talk about it, but the one time I brought it up to her, when I decided to cut her off, she tried to tell me it never happened and that she never called me stupid when I was around (meaning, she definitely called me stupid, just not when I could hear....).
I feel for you. Looks like our mothers share a few similarities.
My mother once said, "having kids is all about luck. With 'Mary' I got lucky. With @lou I had bad luck".
She also put me in a bedroom without a roof where I literally woke up every day to a bunch of bats hanging from the ceiling and marks of bat poop and piss on my sheets. At the same time, my sister was in a perfectly comfortable, bat-free bedroom.
I still have nightmares where I am back to that house.
My mother wonders why I feel no affection towards her. My sister certainly does have that affection, but my mother was very different towards her. That is because my sister was a not a male. Hearing my sister talk about our childhood is like watching that fake comedy trailer for The Shining.
I don't talk to my mother at all anymore, but she is in my brother's life, and my nephew's life. She seems to be a good grandmother, which is all I can ask for. I don't know what she says about me, but she definitely tries to get information from everyone she can.
My brother and I also had drastically different childhoods, for us it's like he was the child she wanted and treated him as such, and I am the child she didn't want, and she pretended to like me until I hit puberty, and was no longer cute, then she decided that I was actually a problem. That 2nd grade outburst was like an omen for things to come.
Bruh... What the fuck.... I'm really sorry for what happened to you.
I mean, I estimate I had at least a 50% chance of becoming The Brazilian Batman. Not this time, unfortunately :P
Once upon a time, I was a sysadmin at a military base. This was back in the dialup days. My bit-herding responsibilities included a large bank of modems that the general staff were using for chat/BBS.
What none of them knew was that the modem/server for each channel had display output directly to a CRT. I didn't design this, I have no idea why someone thought it was nifty to have real-time display of every message. It was my dubious privilege to see a few things that were above my clearance level... including the torrid affair conducted via explicit chats between a couple of command staff members.
I mentioned to my manager that perhaps we shouldn't have continuous monitoring, and he shrugged it off because we were just contractors. Thus was born my itchy distrust of surveillance and desire for privacy.
I had, for reasons, a large number of phone numbers that are redirected to my cell phone. My VOIP provider also provides SMS forwarding. Because of the way it is configured, I get sporadic messages that all come from the same number (my VOIP provider's number), so I can't tell who they are from and I can't respond to them. I get the weirdest shit from these messages. The numbers are for various uninteresting businesses like accounting firms, pest control, dentists, etc, so these have to be from people who have just typo'd a contact number.
Here's a sample of some of it. This is graphic stuff, don't read it if you are easily upset. I removed any personally identifiable material I could see.
cumslut mewthore needing a loan f 1500 and will pay it back 3x
needing it right away MASTERS LOVE ALL AGES MALES RAPING ME ON FILM
CME PICK ME UP AND OWN ME FOREVER TO PIMP OUT
BEGGING
ALL KINKS NO LIMITS CUMSLUT PISS SWALLOWING BITCH TO ABUSE AND HIT AND GANGRAPE ON LIVE FILM
also i must be upfront, i am currently a male who will be transitioning into female, through the XXX hospital program, and letting you know because my
safety and everyone else's is important to me, and since XXXXX andn the people thereof is ignorant and cruel towards people who transition,
switched places with his twin brother, I am not certain of the of the reasoning behind his actions, however, I do know that I texted XXXXX thinking
that during what I call my off time from Covid periods, that in between XXXX at times was my drug deal of what I assume is crystal meth,
my own father did to me, and yes I will always compare XXXX t my father since he has done the same things to me that my father once
but I was told previously was crystalized weed, once I reported the possible very rough sex that XXXX, did to me, the one time he
likely his twin brother, XXXX, since he choose to use his foster fathers last name instead of his birth name XXXX. They will see
would like to clarify, if the WRPS or RCMP have viewed the camera, because if so, I would ask that charges be brought against them both, since no one
did to me when I was a child, which is why I requested this redo, so that I could remember in my own time without rushing my memory to come back. I
it was him, and did ask him the normal way that XXXX listens to. I am sorry I am only recalling this know when I have alot of time on my
deserves to be raped, no matter if they ask for it or not, and I will not tolerate that occuring in our community or Our World, which is why I fully
to be told. XXXXX if it is him, has a mole of his left buttock cheek, and yes it rough and caused me cry ect, however it is no worse then what
explained that recoverying addicts, can literally get closer to people than cops would be able to, which is also how i choose to pay for any surgeries I
hands, and am able to even described that I remember the difference since, XXXX is very loud, and XXXXX always knocked without having
Hello I believe that whoever is watching the footage of the three camera's that were in my apartment that I paid rent for, whenever the landlord/ power
might need, since I said my transitioning would not cost anyone anything, other than normal pay.
intend to be a part of the anti sex trafficking and anti drug trafficking task force, because as you may recall, I reached out to them, and even
of attorney, which I dealt with, XXXX for XXXX, they will see someone who looks like XXXX, however it is most
Yiiiikes.
Although this actually reminded me of a similar situation I was in that’s an unintentionally perfect answer to my own question.
My phone number used to be very close to one that people would mistype, meaning I would get a lot of texts intended for that other number.
Like, a lot.
I just ignored them and never responded, but they kept coming, and it started to become its own little puzzle. Why were so many different numbers texting me? Most people just save numbers in their contacts, so how could SO many people get the other number wrong SO frequently?
Also, weirdly, many of the texts were just pictures of cars.
And not like, cool exciting “look at that!” cars, but everyday photos of everyday cars. Occasionally there’d be a cryptic message attached that didn’t always make sense to me.
It wasn’t until a few car pictures came through with the message “How much?” that it clicked for me.
The person with the slightly different number was a fence for stolen cars, and people were texting them pictures of cars they were considering stealing (or had already stolen), trying to get quotes. People weren’t saving the number for the contact and were more than likely cycling through burner phones, which explains why I would get so many of the texts all the time (as well as why the messages were always cryptic).
After figuring it out, I went to my carrier and asked to have my number changed. They were going to charge me for it, but when I explained the situation, they did it for free. I think my exact words were “keeping my current number might be unintentionally making me a criminal accomplice, and I would like to resolve that.”
Oh I have a similar one, the public number for the bank call center I worked at was one digit different from the number of a hospital ward in the same city (I think it was A&E or something similarly serious). This was a busy call center with long wait times, so this hospital ward was being inundated with misdials. The nurses actually called in to complain and I was the one they got through to. A funny one to have to relay to my team leader, but I don't think the bank did anything about it.
This is a light-hearted one. Or, at least, it ends positively. I was having some pretty severe anxiety, so I decided to go for a brisk walk around the park. It was already dark, so this wasn't the smartest move.
However, the potential peril in the park turned out to be... me. An adult, working out at an unorthodox time. I ran across a group of teenagers who were clearly smoking pot in one of the more secluded areas. They awkwardly greeted me as I passed, and then made a totally normal and not at all paranoid move for the exit. I continued on my circuit of the walking path, and happened to catch up to them while they were carefully, nonchalantly getting into their car.
I told them I wasn't a narc, and they didn't have to worry. One said, "Ok... have a good night..." in a standard human way.
The whole thing just tickled me, and caused much of my anxiety to dissipate... like a puff of smoke.
My father going down on my mom
I saw the opposite. When I was like 5-6yo, my parents got a camcorder and a tripod. This is the early 90s, so one of the bulky ones. Anyway, from a young age, I liked playing with electronics so I set it up their room and played with it. I think my mom was doing household chores in their room and wanted me in sight with the camera. To make sure I didn't break it. I played with the camera a bit before I eventually got distracted and left it and the room.
Fast forward some time later, my parents had some friends over. I think it was the holidays. And my parents wanted to show some home videos. Idk if it was a vacation recording or party recording, I have no clue. My dad hooked up the camcorder to the TV and found the tape my mom wanted to show.
Well, we all got treated to a different kind of "home video." I guess I must've left the camera recording, then they decided to do sexy time. And uhh yeah. I just remember my mom screaming and all the adults having a great laugh at that. Luckily my dad cut the video quickly, but it was still like 5sec of my mom going down on my dad. Lol, oops.
Seared into the brain right? It's awful lol
Yup. I hadn't thought about this memory in long, long, long time until mentioned your experience. Thanks for that, sigh. lol!
When I was 16 or 17 I figured out how to link my ATM card to eBay so I could order things with my savings account. It was with my own money, but it somehow linked my email to my dad's bank account since he was technically the steward for mine. After I turned 18 and split off, for some reason I started getting emailed his checking account balance for a while. Like, a good decade...
Not terribly interesting, but I've got a couple short tales:
I had a brief stint taking a course from my local university, and was therefore assigned a university email address. Thing is, it must have gotten assigned right after someone retired or something, because the address they assigned me was simply my first initial followed by my last name, neither of which is particularly uncommon. Usually there's a discriminator at the end of the uni's emails if there are plural people with the same combination so I was surprised that I didn't have one.
Apparently, some other folks were also surprised by this fact as I received documents intended for someone else, including invoices, debt payment requests, flight itineraries, and a couple of casual communications.
My second brief story is that I used to be in the musical theatre scene in my city, and was a somewhat known person in those circles. I also happen to have the same first and last name as a voice teacher/conductor in town who is also occasionally involved with musical theatre productions, and received a few job offers over Facebook for the other guy (presumably because half my friend list was theatre folks). Thankfully (?) I had already quit theatre by the time the other guy showed up on the scene, so I knew right away that they weren't really looking for me and could point them in the right direction, but it was still amusing at the time.
I'm not 100% positive, but I am genuinely pretty sure I saw a drug deal go down yesterday as I was leaving work. I work in a building in a strip mall, and there's only two rows of parking, so I saw this guy get out of his car and slap something green at another guy on the back. Then I drove off like I didn't see anything, because I don't need to know, lol.
I say this, not as a brag, but as an "I definitely shouldn't have seen that go down"
I was at a ball for young people in my industry at the time, engineering. It was held in a big hotel ballroom, but to be honest I'm no social butterfly and drinks were expensive, so I was chilling in the lobby when the organisers approached the hotel receptionist with a big bag of something. Apparently they were going to give that something away to guests, but they had less than expected so they asked the receptionist to shred them in the morning. I've always kicked myself for being too cowardly to actually go look behind the desk when she went off duty and see just what they wanted to disappear, especially because what they did end up giving out, wristband tickets for a nightclub for a follow up party, weren't great.
I found out what my birthday present this year from my wife is. My birthday is in early January so my wife has learned that she has to buy both a birthday present and a Christmas present at the same time, or else the birthday present tends to not arrive in time. We were having a conversation late last week where she mentioned she was unsure of a birthday gift and was asking for information on the things on my gift list. I realized after the fact that with what I shared what she was most likely to buy me as a gift. The next day, we were selling something used, and so she opened her email up in front of me as we were waiting for the e-transfer and I saw the confirmation email from a website that only one thing on my list sells (and what my guess was going to be). Luckily, since everything was not subtle the night before, I have teased her that I have 95% confidence in what she will get me for my birthday.
We have a similar situation this year. Neither of us really had much on our list after getting engaged and doing a lot of shopping while traveling. So I'm pretty sure both of us bought the only thing the other person mentioned wanting.