I think so too, it's was about 50 feet or so from the train tracks.

We went down at another point looking for it, to no avail. We never did see any signs that they dug anything up though.

Or eels.

I have this persistent vision in my head of some housewife running around a backyard yelling "donteatpoop!!!"

One time me and 2 friends of mine went downtown to a concert at a bar. We got there about an hour early and decided to "walk around" and "see the sights". Well yea...it was nighttime and we were in front of this construction site...so yea...see the sights...sure...

So anyways, we decided to walk a little bit further away from the crowd so no one could see us "seeing the sights". I said out loud "Hey let's go over there through those bushes." As I walked into the bushes, something odd struck me. It was the interesting sensation of no ground beneath my feet. Apparently there was a rather sizable hole that the bushes had grown over.

This construction site was at the edge of the Potomac River BTW. I distinctly recall time slowing down as I fell and I had the time to think "Gee I wonder if I am going to land in the river, or on the rocks on the shore. If I land on the rocks, I wonder how much it will hurt."

Well as it turns out, the hole was not that deep. It "only" went down about 10 feet and my friends were able to pull me out. But there was a lot concrete and steel chunks and broken glass down there. Oh yea, and it smelled like people had been pissing down the hole as well.

My back was all cut up and the tye-dye I had made that evening was all ripped.

But we still got to "see the sights" and go to the concert.

That was fun, let me tell you.

This is all well and good...But............I shot a guy, then I reloaded. The next few felt the rounds. I don't know what I hit. I put a new clip in. I went to smoke a joint in a cave. War is heck!

My favorite "my friend Arpi" story:
Arpi had a car. Not new, but still OK Opel Senator 3.0. The maximalist he is, he still wanted some improvements.
First he came up with the usual things: the coolness of cheap ass car toys, some paint job, etc... Everyone who counted for him has these, and he wanted something special. He wanted something like KIT.

He started with placing switches, leds all over the dashboard. They did not have any function, they just looked good according to him. Other people thought it looked like it came from an early StartTrek episode.

The best thing was 8 up-down switch connected to ignition.
The shrewd guy built in some of them upside down so some of them had to be switched down to be switched up. The big idea was that without hitting the right combination the car would not start, and more importantly he thought it is very impressive as he sets the switches before start.
"you know it is like when Chuck Norris starts the chopper in that movie...". It took him a few days to memorize how he should set the switches. Before that he just switched randomly hoping to start the car. At every attempt he said: "Now I got it, this will work, you will see..."
I have already learned the correct configurations when he still needed 5 or 6 attempts to start the car. Once I have asked him why doesn't he write down the combination. He answered if the paper with the combination gets lost someone can easily steal the car. I imagined as someone finds in a parking lot a piece of paper with notes: UUDUDDU
and smiles: "Wow, this must be the key for Arpi's secret car combination lock, lets steal it!"
After a while he learned the combination, so he needed new tricks.

The next big thing was The ALARM.
I was a bit reluctant to sit in the car because I did not know if I will be able to keep a straight face, but at the end, well, he begged me in his car.
He had an ancient 486 compatible laptop, he connected it to the alarm of the car, to one of the speakers, and somewhere in the trunk with a magnetic switch.
The speaker was needed, because the laptop said all kind of warnings if it detected an attempt to theft: "Thief!" "The car will shut down in 15 seconds" "I have alarmed the nearest police station", etc... The car thief was supposed to be scared from this and run away.
If you put a magnet to the right place in the trunk, it switched a magnetic switch, and the laptop booted, then you could start the car, this will start to run the warning program, and the car worked properly.
The problem was that the place for the magnet wasn't marked on the cover of the trunk.
The other problem was that the guy who wrote the program could write it only for Windows 3.11.
So the start of the car looked like this:
Arpi ran around the car checking if there is any sign of a theft attempt. He opened the car, I had to sit in, because he had to put the magnet to the secret place ("Sorry bro, I can not show it to anyone, not even to you") he came to the front,
started the car, listened for the hard drive to figure out if the computer boots, cursed, put the magnet to a different place, it booted, but we had to wait for it to start windows If windows 3.11 started with a running engine the software cut the ignition right away. So we were sitting there for a few minutes waiting for windows to start, at this point the audio and the speaker of the computer started to generate some wild noise for a few seconds, and then the computer started to issue the warnings.

We were in a parking area next to his apartment. People started to look at us, some of them probably knew the situation very well, because called his friends "to watch the show".

The speaker started to scream: "Thief! Thief! The engine is going to stop!" etc...
The spectators started to grin.

Arpi was screaming too: "f**king Echo, f**k the laptop, f**k the programmer!" etc...
I was thinking about running away, but there were already too many people watching us, so I just pretended everything is OK.

Arpi tried the ignition, it did not work. He opened the hood reconnected some wires, Screamed at the people: "Dont eyeball me!"
he killed the engine, rebooted the laptop, waited again, warnings issued, ignition, and this time the car started, we rolled out with smoking tires, the car audio started to play cottoneyejoe, and we were on our way. Arpi was obviously proud of himself. He asked: Now how is this for cool?
I should have said: what if the thief does not put the magnet in place at all, then the laptop does not boot, so the thief will not have any warnings etc... the car is completely prone for thieves. Or maybe I could have said that from the money he payed for the old laptop and the programmer he could have bought a normal alarm system.

LMAO. The friends you love to hate.

An other "my friend Arpi" story that almost ended in disaster, not to mention the disaster somewhere in the middle of the story.

Before his Opel Senator he had a Russian made car: a Lada. It was an old Lada, a bit rusty. Arpi did not have much money, the car didn't eve n have the required state inspection, so he resorted to visual tuning of the car. He had the little accessories like skull skull gear knob, change holder, multifunction instrument panel (thermometer+compass+watch), mirror with a watch (the watch was broken, but never mind, the important thing was that it had a watch.
At this point he run out of money.
At this point came in the picture his helpful friends. These friends did not always understand why Arpi wants certain things, still they helped him.
First step was the dashboard.
Arpi have seen in a magazine a sportscar that had shiny dashboard, so he wanted one.
First he tried to cut one from an aluminum sheet. He cut himself really bad but at least decided to approach the problem from a different angle: now he wanted to use aluminum foil.
He bought 30 tubes of Technokol Rapid, this is a quick drying glue, it is highly flammable and some people use its vapors as narcotics.
They started to glue the aluminum foil on a nice Sunday morning. Fortunately I got there only at the end.
They worked in a garage, they went completely nuts from the vapors of the glue. I knew something is wrong because the garage door smelled from meters like a paint factory.
All Arpi said was: "hehehe". And sometimes he added: "cool, hehe".
They were sitting on the garage floor with his friends and grinned. I looked at the car. I could tell they started on the right side, because there the aluminum foil was well fit to the dashboard and flat, on the right side obviously they used scissors to cut the foil. As they continued the work toward the driver's side the vapors got the better of them. By the time they got to the odometer they glued over it, covered with aluminum foil peaces the steering wheel and the ventilation holes, half of the left window, and some of the left door, both seats, and everything was dripping from the glue. First they carefully flattened the foil to the dashboard, later they were not disturbed by so minor errors. I had this mental picture: imagine the tin man driving the car, getting in a lethal accident and splashing all over the dashboard.
I have pulled them out to fresh air, I realised only then, that their had and cloths shines too they got the glue and aluminum foil on each other. It must have been a great party.
They were looking at me with dilated eyes, completely confused from the sunshine, and just kept on silently shining. They looked like happy UFOnautes after a flying saucer crash.

Next day we scrapped. Third day too. On the fourth day we realized that Technokol Rapid is stronger than us.
Arpi was desperate because the car looked weird with the scrapped aluminum foil on the dashboard and the front seats, so he needed some other improvements on the car.
That was the Wing. You know on the back of sportscars there is sometimes a winglike thingy that Arpi could not buy so he got a steel sheet welded to two rod that ended in screws, he bore two holes, and screwed the thing on the trunk. It looked terrible, not the right shape, but at least that thing wasn't half rusted, generally on that car it was actually an improvement. It had to be painted. Arpi did not have enough money for quality paint, but he read somewhere that minor painting errors can be fixed up with nail polish.
We told him it is not a "minor" error, it might need a lot of nail polish. He said: "no problemo, I just buy some and I will dilute it".
Back than boys hardly ever purchased nail polish, so we were drawing unwanted attention.
I told Arpi that I heard that nail polish looks different in the bottle than dried on a surface, so we have to try it. I shouldn't have told him, because we had to cover for him and he opened all the red nail polishes, and painted little dots on his nails. We got out went to the car and got absorbed in discussing the paint job when I realized that we have several people watching us. It just hit me than that we are at a shopping mall, observing my friend's polished nails, discussing witch nail polish color goes better with his car. They walked away quickly when Arpi told them "I need it on my wing". We went back and Arpi purchased one single bottle of nail polish and some remover. Arpi diluted the nail polish with the remover, and it became light pink. I was hoping that we will not paint with it, but we did.
The wing became spotted pinkish. A la Barbie-mobile.
The reason for all this fuss: the cashier girl at the ice cream parlor.

There was one more thing left: half of the exhaust pipe was missing, Arpi found an iron pipe and he wanted to put it in the place of the missing part. The pipe was obviously too heavy. We went to a mechanic, the mechanic sent us to hell. "I will do it" said Arpi and soldered the iron pipe in place.

After this we started to the icecream parlor to impress the girl. After 50 meters the pipe fall off. After 100 more yards the exhaust pipe fall off too. Arpi said: "No problemo, it has a better sound without the exhaust pipe".

We stopped a few hundred meters before the iccream parlor, and the plan was that I call the girl out, and Arpi will arrive with a sliding and turning stop and impress. I have asked him if he had ever tried this sliding and turning stop, he said no, but he have seen it in movies.

OK. I got there, there were lots of customers, so the girl did not want to come out. I heard Arpi coming (everybody heard him: the car did not have the exhaust system), so I urged her, come out because... And then we heard screaming breaks sounds of crashing car. I run out really worried, the girl after me, but there were no problem, the car just landed with one side half way in a ditch. Arpi pretended this is how he wanted to stop, but he wasn't very convincing. Especially because one of the wheels were in a weird angle. It kind of broke out. But he could not see this, it was on the other side of the car. (He told me later, he felt the car standing on a weird way, but he thought it will be OK when he comes out of the ditch). He started to talk to the girl, and for my surprise they started to go to the car, the girl stepped in, Arpi went around to sit in too, he saw the broken out wheel, and went completely pale.
He was just sitting there.
"Lets go" said the girl.
"OK, just look at it first, what a cool dashboard I have..."
(It was not nice from me, but started to grin at this point)
The girl said: "yeah, khm..., uh... nice. Are we going now?"
"A little later, just listen first what a cool sound it has" and Arpi started the engine (at the third try).
Girl "God, this is deafening, lets go quick..."
Arpi: "lets go later, lets just talk now..."
Girl: "Is this why you have asked me out? There are the customers waiting, and you call me away just to talk?"
Arpi got angry and loaded on the girl all the frustration of the week (naturally screaming at her): "No we dont go, f**k it, because the f**king wheel broke out, and I have f**king enough, my nail still has some polish here and there, even my scrotum has some aluminum foil glued to it..."
At this point - evil me - my tears were falling from laughing. Especially when looking at the girl's face.
After this the police arrived, it turned out that the car does not have the state inspection, somehow everything got arranged by Arpi's parents at the end.

The interesting thing is that years later when Arpi talked about the events it did not come down as the deepest point of his life, sitting in the broken car with the dream girl, he usually graded it as an "almost total success":
"If I steer the wheel 2 inch more to the right, I would have scored with the girl." Yeah. 2 inches can be rather decisive in life.

These stories are too long for my English skills. Feel free to edit it for stylistic and grammar changes.

Even if I wanted to edit, I couldn't for the tears of laughter streaming down my face.

I have the best stories with my first husband. We get along, so our kids always tell me when they are talking about one of our adventures.

Story #1

J was in the Navy like me. He lived with a bunch of guys and one of them was a pig. He had a waterbed and I don't remember why, but he asked us to drain it for him. We are on the 3rd floor of an apt complex.

Gene used to leave pizza boxes, food and clothes everywhere...he wasn't too hip on going to the laundermat either.

For some other reason, the waterbed mattress was on the floor. No pedestal. Just a mattress filled with water on the floor.

So, we get a hose, I hoist it up over the window sill and drop the end down to my bf and tell him to "suck it".

He didn't suck well and suggested I try.

I walk downstairs and outside and give it a go and believe it or not, I don't suck well either.

We sucked till we got headaches and got frustrated and hungry. We brought the hose back in the bedroom, tossed it on the floor (it's still connected to the bed) and make a run for the border.

We come back and are in the living room happily munching on our tacos.

There is a knock at the door. A very large black man is asking us if we are having any "problems" with our apt, as he has water pouring out of his bathroom vents. We tell him no.

We go to the bedroom to find that the hose when flat will leak water and it emptied the WHOLE WATER bed into the bedroom. The clothes are floating in and out of the closet. Soggy pizza boxes are treading water and we are ankle deep in it.

We start busting out laughing first off. Neither one of us are on the lease. We try and use the clothes to soak up the water. It was a freaking mess.

Story two....

We are married and have a crappy manual Datsun B210. We have a 10 ft ditch and a bridge to cross from the a parking lot to our townhouse.

Hubby comes home in our other equally crappy SMURF blue ford ranchero, and asks where the car is.

I reply...."I dunno, I parked it up front"

We go outside to find that it rolled into the 10 ft ditch. I thought I put it in gear....

So, Hubby gets some clothesline and ties it to the bumper of the Ranchero and the Datsun and attempts to pull it out.

Cept, the Datsun was really stuck and he ripped the bumped off his ranchero instead.

I have so many funny stories with him. Omg, he never got mad at everything and I think everything we tried to do broke or fell apart.

We met in the parking lot of the above apt complex (waterbed story) He remembers the first time he met me....my bf at the time was puking his guts out in the parking lot and I had my hands on my knees bent over and laughing at him. I totally outdrank him.

And I can still outdrink any of you!!

Don't worry about it, they were good; crazy grammar and all.

These are the best stories and because you type them with "an accent" I can hear you tell them in my head. I'm crying with laughter. More Arpi stories. I hope you are still friends with him, he's a gem, you cannot stop being friends with him.

OMG. I still have tinfoil on my scrotum...OMG.

There was an episode of This American Life about a house just like that.

OK, my daughters did this a few years ago, but I was a witness to the sequence of events. I am just cutting and pasting it from the blog I wrote when it happened.

_________________________________


I should state ahead of time that my 4 yr old daughter is the more logical of the two kids in this story, and very matter of fact with how she deals with life in general, and my 7 yr old is a total paranormal freak/conspiracy theorist.

My 7 year started a collection of dead bugs about a week ago, mostly by finding dead bugs in our yard, or on walks, and keeping them in a
little container to look at later. Yesterday we were walking home from the library, and came across a dying "painted lady" butterfly, so my 7 year old decided to bring it home to add to her collection once it "passed on" (her words). By the time we made it home, the butterfly was no longer moving, so she put it in the container with the rest of her collection, despite me telling her that it might not be dead yet, which got me looked at like I had no idea what I was talking about.

After lunch the kids decided they wanted to look at the dead bugs, so the 7 yr old carefully opened her collection box, which startled the still nearly dead butterfly, and it moved some....

7 yr old: *SCREAMS* It's a vampire butterfly!!!

4 yr old: are you sure it's not just alive?

7 yr old: Don't you UNDERSTAND??? it DIED! now it MOVED - IT'S THE UNDEAD!!!!

4 yr old: Like a zombie?

7 yr old: Yeah, zombies are undead too, but this is a VAMPIRE BUTTERFLY!!!!

4 yr old: Are you SURE it's a vampire?

7 yr old: YES!! it MOVED!! It's UNDEAD!!!


At this point the 4 yr old took the situation into her own hands, calmly walked into the kitchen, got a butter knife, and killed the butterfly.


7 yr old (now more freaked out by her sister than the former vampire butterfly): MOMMMMMEEEEEE! SHE KILLED MY BUTTERFLY!!!

4 yr old: but you TOLD ME it was a vampire and they have to be killed!



*sigh*

Fast forward to today, and my 7 yr old is refusing to get rid of the now definitely dead vampire butterfly in her collection until her sister makes an apology to the butterfly's spirit, so that it won't haunt our house. I have no idea where the older child gets this stuff, but the 4 yr old is getting a bit annoyed with it.

Ha! I love it. You should tell them that ghost butterflies are just moths. That's what I tell my kids.

In normal circumstances that would be a cute thing to tell my kids, but, even though it's been 3 years since that happened, if I told my 10 yr old that moths are butterfly ghosts, she'd most likely glom onto the idea that she was really seeing ghosts and terrify herself. She has an unnatural obsession with horror/ghosts/paranormal and, because of an offhanded joke my husband made within her earshot when she was a very little kid (like 3 or 4), she still believes aliens are watching her.

Hmmm. I tried this trick with the son of a guy I was dating. The son wouldn't go to sleep without a light on because of the monsters under his bed. A very serious problem those monsters. They only come out in the dark. This son's father did not take the child seriously and was just annoyed that he couldn't shut the light off, but the son was very serious.

So, I told the boy I have a cure now that I knew what the problem was. I got a fancy spray bottle and filled it with water, put some blue food coloring in it, put some sparkles things in it and brought it to the house. I also had a small vial, where I'd put some drops of red food coloring.

Right in front of the boy I made a monster repellent by adding the secret ingredient to the magic liquid. Then I sprayed the whole room with it. Extra attention under the bed and the closet and left the bottle on the nightstand telling him "you won't need this, but you keep it for when I'm not here".

Worked like a charm.

Your 10 year old won't buy that she's a bit too old but you could take her off to one of those occult shops or a health food store even and get some herbs (take the shop clerk aside and have her help you) so you could make an alien repellent.

She does have a charm that one of my more occultish friends gave her for protection, and she won't take it off, but what happened to make her afraid was this:

When my daughter was about 3 or 4 she happened to pay attention to part of a documentary we were watching about area 51, and repeatedly heard the phrase "the nevada desert." We lived in the Nevada desert, nowhere near area 51, but she didn't understand that, she just knew where we lived.

It was the middle of summer, and our house had no air conditioning, so the only way to get any relief from the heat of the day was to have our windows open at night, including the one in her bedroom. That night she was scared to be in her bedroom with the window open, even though the curtain was closed, because she was sure aliens were trying to look in her window.

Luckily, my daughter has always been keen on animals, and various scientific facts about them, so, thinking quickly, I sat her on the couch and asked her if she remembered how bees and dogs can see things that people can't. She did. I then told her that aliens can't see the same thing as humans, so even though WE can see through her window screen, an alien would see it just like a wall, and wouldn't be able to see through it to her.

My explanation satisfied her, and she went quietly to bed her bedroom, which happened to be right off the living room. As I finished tucking her in, and left the room, my husband, her oh-so-thinking-before-speaking father, grinned and said to me, "Aliens can't see through window screens, but they can see through walls." Of course she heard this, and freaked out. The idea has stayed with her since then.

At this point I think she knows her fear is irrational, but she still worries about aliens being outside her window.

Go kick your hubby in the shins for me, k?