Originally Posted by
Dan Druff
Marty's thread of "Guess which story is BS" has inspired me to write my own version.
As with Marty's only ONE of these stories is false (vote above), and all of them have the theme of "close calls which could have ended in tragedy".
If I have mentioned any of these on radio before, please don't give them away....
A) In 1984, at the age of 12, my soccer coach asked if any kid wanted to volunteer to work in his skate shop. I totally wanted to do it, but I didn't hear him ask the question at first because I wasn't paying attention, and by the time I knew what was going on, he had already selected two kids who had raised their hands before me. I told my mom about this, and she scolded me for not paying attention and "missing a good opportunity". Two months later, the coach was arrested for molesting multiple boys, including the two from the team that had been selected. Amazingly, they let him out of jail after less than 10 years, and he molested about 100 more boys before being caught in 2001. He's now serving a life sentence.
B) In 1988, we had a family vacation planned to Europe during our December break from school. Our school district actually gave 3 weeks off in December instead of 2 (but started a week earlier than everyone else to make up for it), so this gave our family some nice traveling opportunities during "low season", to where we could avoid the December 25-January 1 crowd that tends to fill up every destination. Our trip in December '88 was to last from December 10-21, where we would start off in London, and then go to France and fly home from Germany. Our December 21 flight home was to be from Frankfurt, stopping in New York, changing planes, and going on to Los Angeles. We never took this trip. My mom came down with appendicitis on December 8, and in those days, that meant a weeklong hospital stay. My dad was really frustrated at the time that he had to eat 5 roundtrip airfares for the canceled trip, but obviously this was no one's fault and there was nothing we could do. We were shocked on December 21 when we turned on the news to see that Pan Am Flight 103 blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, and that was the exact flight we were scheduled to take from Frankfurt returning home.
C) When I was 17 years old, I was calling a party line, and was running into something very frustrating. Whenever I would start talking to a teenage girl on there and seemingly be getting somewhere, the line would cut. I soon learned that the party line owner was a rumored pedo (a straight one, unlike the guy in the first story), and was intentionally cutting off "the competition" whenever a teen girl was on. I was angry about this, and decided to hack the guy's phone system to get revenge. I did it, and messed it up pretty badly, on a day when I knew the owner wouldn't be around. The guy then got my information from a snitch, and called to threaten me. Normally I would have told the guy to fuck off, but something seemed "off" about him, and he scared me. Instead, I calmly explained to him why I did it, and asked him if we could just drop the whole thing if I agreed not to call his line again. He said fine, and it was over. Two years later, he murdered someone he barely knew and is now serving a life sentence.
D) When I was 20, I was on a date, and driving about 50 MPH on a major surface street at night. I approached an intersection with a green light, and proceeded normally. A driver coming the other way didn't see me, and made an unprotected left turn, heading into what was almost a certain head-on collision. My car was a small, cheap piece of shit, and likely would not have handled the accident well. I saw it coming, jammed on the brakes, and made a super-quick right turn at the same time. I very narrowly avoided the other car, but was headed for a telephone pole, and the car finally stopped 6 inches from the pole. A witness ran up and said that it was "amazing" what he just saw, and that "it was so close that the cars looked like they passed through each other." He complimented me on my avoidance of the accident, stating that he saw it happening and was 100% sure that a bad accident was inevitable. The other driver also stopped, and was profusely apologizing. The witness offered to testify on my behalf, but I told him there was nothing to testify about, as there was no damage and nobody was hurt. As a weird side note, my date, who was also amazed and thankful we avoided that accident, was in an actual accident 10 years later (also as a passenger), and still has corrective surgery to this day as part of a lifelong recovery process from it.
E) In January 1994, the infamous 6.7 Northridge earthquake hit Los Angeles. It occurred around 4:30am, a time I was usually on the computer, as I kept a very late sleeping schedule. However, that night I went out with a new girl, and hadn't come home yet. A large, heavy bookcase came down during the quake, and smashed on the computer chair, exactly at the spot I would have been sitting if I hadn't gone out that night.