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You'll grow up sometime

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Revengeofthenerds, Aug 31, 2018.

  1. Revengeofthenerds

    Revengeofthenerds
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    ER Frequent Flyer Platinum Member

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    I'm an adrenaline junky. When I was growing up in the country, we used to have firework wars with roman candles. ATV bottle rocket hunting each other. BB gun wars. I'd stay up all night drinking then go run 15 miles just to see if I could.

    So of course I ignored what the doctors said after my brain tumor, something about "blah blah your inner ear is fucked up and you can never balance again." Total Dunning-Kruger Effect. I broke a bunch of bones on dirt bikes, jumping from trees into mulch piles, swinging on ropes into too-shallow ponds, falling off ladders. You know, standard stuff. When I met my wife, 1 year to the day after my surgery, my broken bone count was at 6, since the surgery. I don't claim to be smart. But I had fun. I felt I was invincible.

    10 years later, now I'm paranoid. I don't drink around my children, who are 4 and 1. Except for a glass of wine here and there and beers when they go to sleep. The last time I broke a bone, it was my nose (for the 6th time, I think?) and it was a sailboat accident involving an unanticipated jive. My wife having our second child really did it for me. I stopped drinking hard liquor when our eldest was born, but I finally stopped that adrenaline junky crap with our newest. To be honest, I do miss the fun I had. But now is a different kind of fun.

    Now I get my adrenaline off hot sauce.

    Focus: When was your "growing up" moment?

    Alt. Focus: When, or at what age, do you wish you grew up?
     
    #1 Revengeofthenerds, Aug 31, 2018
    Last edited: Aug 31, 2018
  2. Juice

    Juice
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    A couple key events stick out. When I was kid, the other kids i was friends with used to go to a lake in my neighborhood at the time. One time we went down there and a guy was lying on the beach with a needle stuck in his arm. We thought he was dead, but he had just OD'd. Never saw anything like it before. The other event was probably when my sister got sick the first time. It was the first time I saw my parents beaten down and emotionally wrecked. It was the first "serious" thing our immediate family ever had to deal with, at least that I was aware of.
     
  3. rei

    rei
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    I crashed my parents minivan when I was 18 and tried to enjoy rollercoasters the following week and it just felt like a huge bummer.
     
  4. walt

    walt
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    Focus: Having a Sheriff's Deputy tell me it was a miracle no one was killed in our car crash my junior year in high school. THAT will remind you that yeah, you're mortal.

    25+ years later, my back still hurts.
     
  5. audreymonroe

    audreymonroe
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    The most powerful cervix... in the world...

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    There have been a lot of growing up moments starting very early for me, but I always think of this one scene as the real demarcation between my childhood and being - in some sense - a grown-up. A couple months after my stepmom was diagnosed with cancer there was a big storm and power outage that woke me and my younger stepbrother up but not our parents. I was 11 and he was 5 at the time and I could hear him crying in his room, so I went over there to comfort him and I did it really well and that surprised me. I had already been staying home alone and cooking for myself for about a year, and I'd watch him now and then, but there was something symbollic about them being right down the hall but not actually there to help us as scared kids that made me realize "Oh shit, it's just us, and I'm about to deal with a whole lot of adult stuff while the actual adults are going to be off in their own world." And that ended up being true. There was no real turning back point to being at all childlike for me after that night.
     
  6. bewildered

    bewildered
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    Focus: one summer when I was in middle school, late one night when everyone was asleep and the lights were out we had some loud insistent banging on the back door of my parents house. This woke my mother up, who got the whole house up. My next door neighbor was at the back door, covered in blood, and there were bloody handprints all over the back door from him banging. He had made his way from his house next by exiting his kitchen window and traveling through our carport along our cars, to our back door for help. His house was on fire and he was covered in gashes and blood. We called 911 and in the meantime my dad and brother fought the fire with garden hoses. While we were waiting for help, I sat with my neighbor in the driveway. He was a 50 something year old bachelor. He just sort of sat there and let me tend to him. He had to have been in shock. I was probably only about 12 years old and I was trying to sop up his blood with peroxide doused cotton balls.

    The paramedics came and wheeled him down the steep hill to the ambulance with the help of about 5 paramedics. They almost lost the gurney down the hill because of his size and the steepness of the hill.

    We found out later that it was very fortunate that my dad and brother tried to control the flames. The kitchen was completely on fire but if the fire had made its way through the wall into the adjacent outside storage area, all of the gas tanks and the storage area would have exploded. The house was not burnt to the ground but it had to be completely gutted because there was smoke damage in the entire house.

    My neighbor died after about 10 days in the hospital from smoke inhalation and burns inside and out of his body. He was at a Mardi Gras organization meeting that night and was drunk. Apparently he tried to cook french fries in oil on the stove and fell asleep, waking up to flames. He tried to fight the flames himself but it got worse and he hurt himself, and eventually escaped out the window to us.

    Remember the bloody handprints on the door and all of the gore smeared across the cars and dripping on the carport? I got the privilege of hosing it all off.
     
  7. scotchcrotch

    scotchcrotch
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    First week of 7th grade one of my better friends had passed away. The details were murky...

    We had multiple counselors come in the classroom to try to explain to us “autoerotic asphyxiation” without crossing boundaries.

    Apparently he had read in a magazine about it using a rope and he wasn’t able to get it off in time.

    Combine this with us kids being new to masturbation and I’m surprised I came out as normal as I have.
     
  8. NatCH

    NatCH
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    I had to spend the end of my freshman year of high school being uncomfortable when friends would ask me what “accidental hanging” meant, when my older brother died. “I mean...how does somebody accidentally hang themselves? That makes no sense!”
    That was definitely a growing up moment.
     
  9. Kampf Trinker

    Kampf Trinker
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    The 4th or 5th time I had sex with Asia Argento. I was finally old enough not to feel gross and abused.
     
  10. Kubla Kahn

    Kubla Kahn
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    With all the phone apps and accessories you think they’d have a fit bit pulse monitor and oxygen sensor that could be wifid to a automized ligature device around your neck. Or you can just hold your breath like normal people do and not worry about anything but heart attacks or stroking out.
     
  11. Frebis

    Frebis
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    This tech definitely exists. I have a 4 month old child, and my wife puts a sock on him before bed that will alert us if he stops breathing. It rings a base station and our phone. If the tech exists for babies it probably does for adults too.
     
  12. Puffman

    Puffman
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    Just put the sock on your dong. Job done.