"A Vallejo man was found in a child's swing Saturday morning after reportedly being stuck for about nine hours, police said. At about 6 a.m., a groundskeeper of Blue Rock Springs Park heard a man screaming when he arrived at work. He then called the police to investigate. Upon arrival, police found a 21-year-old man stuck in a child's swing, which has two leg holes. The man told police that he had been stuck in the swing since 9 p.m. Friday after he allegedly made a $100 bet with his friends. He proceeded to lube himself with laundry detergent to get into the swing, police said. The friends then reportedly left him swinging through the night. Vallejo firefighters then were called to rescue him by cutting the swing chains off. He was then transported to Kaiser Permanente Vallejo Medical Center, where firefighters used a cast cutter to cut the swing off his body, firefighters said. He sustained non-life threatening injuries." Link Focus: What's the stupidest thing you've ever done on a bet? Alt. Focus: Have your friends ever left you stuck in a precarious situation? Have you ever done the same to a friend? Discuss.
My first real experience living on my own came during the summer of my second year of university (not counting the two years I had lived in a dorm leading up to then). Me and two friends had a house in Kelowna, and while we didn't do that much "crazy" stuff, I can't believe how stupid we were sometimes. This one night we had a party at our place, and of course got reeeal drunk. I remember Roommate 1 had gone to bed, and me and RM 2 were winding down the night on the deck. Quick side note about our place: It was actually a duplex, and we had the upstairs. Our landlord was a fucking idiot, and never got around to fixing the deck for the entire two years my friends lived there (I was just there for two summers). What was wrong with the deck? It had no railings whatsoever. Just three glorious sides of walk-off-the-edge-if-you're-not-careful, plywood deck. So, me and RM 2 were on this beast of a deck, both of us piss drunk and ready to end the night. He started walking right up to the edge of the deck and giggling, then standing on one foot, etc. I remember a faint voice in my head telling me this was very dangerous, but my overall mood/level of concern managed to remain completely unchanged. Finally, he laid down along the edge of the deck, so he would have just fallen off if he shifted to the left even a little bit. I guess this was as good a place as any to pass out, and that's exactly what he did. With his entire body on the VERY edge of a second story deck with no railing whatsoever, he passed out. And I just left him there. I wasn't even being an asshole, I just legitimately thought "whatever, he'll be fine." He was fine, so I suppose that proves that my drunken instincts are very good. Or maybe there was a 90% chance of him breaking his arm falling on the the pile of 2X4s below, and he was just lucky he didn't move at all in his sleep. (Oh right, there was a pile of 2X4s below.)
FOCUS: I used to take all kinds of bets. One place I worked at would have a pool going at any given time, with a good amount of coin put in by the kitchen staff, which was used to "dare" one another. Worst one was snorting a line of wasabi. Went to the hospital for that one. Steve-O gets respect for manning up, but fuck him, I did it first.
I almost never take people up on bets. I'm too competitive to risk failure. That doesn't stop me from challenging friends with this: Spoiler and this: Spoiler every time we get drunk and they start acting brave.
In high school there were a few kids that were kinda whores, they'd do anything for enough money. The dumbest thing I got one of them to do is put pixy sticks in his eye. That was pretty awesome. As for my friends leaving me in a precarious situation, once while snowboarding at Breck I caught my back edge and slammed pretty hard. My gear flew everywhere and I had strangers coming up to check on me. Becuase my friends were skiers they were all ahead of me. After I collected myself I made it to the lift where I met up with them. Once we got in the lift I noticed I started feeling really dizzy and kinda nauseous, and told my friends this. Once we got to the top I told them I was feeling sick but they told me to walk it off. They decided to keep on skiing without me basically, leaving me alone at a ski lodge on the top of the mountain. After being in the lodge I started feeling this intense sense of deja vu, like I had already been here before even though I'd never been there before in my life. After this I decided to go talk to ski patrol, where at first they told me to wait a bit, then decided to take me down after I described feeling like I was in a dream. As for my friends? I never really heard from them the rest of the day. Coincidentally my sisters friends were in Summit that day and ended up picking me up from the hospital after about an 8 hour stay.
In high school a friend worked at Subway. A few of us would hang out there late some nights to get some free food. This one always had a few bottles of hot sauce for people to use if they choose. One bottle was Dave's Insanity Sauce. Habanero sauce at its finest. All but one friend knew what it was. A drop was good for a full pot of chili, etc. I tried it once by dipping a toothpick in and it burned pretty good, just that very little bit. This was late 95/early 96 right after this stuff came out and nobody really knew of anything hotter than Tabasco or the very hottest wings at BW3's, etc. That one friend didn't believe us that it was so hot so we pooled some money together and convinced him to eat a heaping tablespoon of the sauce. This is a disturbing amount. Even to this day I get chills thinking about it. I love stupidly hot stuff but it has to be balanced and within reason. He swallowed it down and was looking all triumphant for about a second or two. Then the first wave hit him. He doubled over, started dryheaving, leaned back up and was bright red. He couldn't even get a scream out. He started sweating like crazy and shaking. At first we were all rolling with laughter as it was the funniest thing we had ever seen. Then it seemed a second wave hit him and then we started to get a little scared. It was late and the place was empty so we filled a couple cups with ice and handed him a few pieces of bread to chew on. Nothing was helping. We were getting concerned as he was just twitching and convulsing a little bit. He was going into shock. A few minutes in as we started to panic a bit we were about to call 911 when he told us he was ok. He was still twitching and pretty rough but he knew he wasn't in dange just his system went into overload. It was snowing outside so we took him out in the cold, he was just standing there twitching eating bread. We were still very close to calling 911 but he kept reassuring us he was fine. It's funny now but we all got pretty scared. I'm a fan of habanero salsas and have even had some good bhut jolokia(ghost pepper) salsas, but they were blends and made to be eaten. Any of the stuff made with the intent of cooking with is crazy to use straight. He wasn't probably in any real danger but the newness of it and nobody knowing what was going on was crazy. He was always a fan of hot stuff and he actually developed a crazy ability to handle hot sauces on wings, etc. after this as I'm sure most of the hottest wings out there aren't even remotely close to the heat from that heaping pure tablespoon of Dave's.
The "I'm drunk and stuck in a swing" call is pretty common. I've run it twice. I'm trying to figure out why they needed a cast saw at the hospital. We use tin snips and it works great (see below): Spoiler