It’s the late 90s. I’m 13 years old, living with my family in an old house out in the sticks. I’m home alone late at night (a very uncommon occurrence) and I put on the movie Full Metal Jacket, which I had never seen before.
Spoilers ahead (Do I need to call out spoilers for a movie made 40 years ago?)
The main character, “Joker,” is in boot camp. While on night watch, he finds a squad mate, “Pyle,” sitting on the toilet holding his rifle. Pyle is slow and has been getting bullied throughout the movie. He puts a magazine in his rifle and says some creepy shit… he has clearly lost it. Joker tries to talk him down, then gets the drill instructor. The drill instructor yells at Pyle. Pyle smiles, then shoots the drill instructor dead. He points the rifle at Joker then sits back down on the toilet, puts the barrel in his mouth, and blows his brains out.
I’m not exaggerating here: the power goes off at that exact moment; I see a close up of Pyle blowing his brains out all over the tile wall behind him then everything goes black… pitch black. Like I said, I’m in the sticks. There are no streetlights or nearby houses providing any light, and not much moonlight; It’s all just darkness.
Im 13, alone, and freaked out. I can’t see shit and don’t know where a flashlight is. I stumble around for a while and finally find one. Old house bonus: the house has a crusty old fuse box, not a circuit breaker, and the fuse box is outside. I find a fuse and muster up the courage to go out there. I go out to the creepy, spider infested corner where fuse box is, find some more courage (or maybe desperation), and start swapping fuses in the hopes that one is blown. I just about start crying with relief when I find the right one and the lights pop on.
I did not finish the movie that night.
Vincent D’Onofrio is so good in everything.
I am… in a world… of shit
I was “don’t take that kid to a store full of expensive fragile shit” age and disposition.
My mom took me through the expensive fragile shit section of Dillards or some other mall store.
Pitch black. The first thing everyone heard was my mother, standing next to me and holding my hand with a death grip, yelling “STRANGER DONT FUC-UH-SHITTING MOVE GODDAMIT”
My soul rocketed out my ass directly through my pants and I did not fuckuhshittingmove.
Because shouting “shitting” is slightly more socially acceptable than “fucking”. I guess?
I was busy getting absolutely sloshed on scotch at home alone because I was an alcoholic, the power went out, and I thought “I’ll light some candles and read a book in bed!”
Promptly passed out and woke up to the smoke alarm going off with flames crackling up the wooden bedside cabinet and the mattress starting to smoke, burning my forehead and some of my hair.
The only reason I didn’t die is because I forgot to close the bedroom door, the smoke detector was out in the hall. If the door was closed, the room would have filled with smoke and killed me before the alarm went off.
The machine I was hooked up to that was draining my fluids after surgery thankfully had a battery backup, and the power was only out for 3 hours. After talking with the nurses, we had come up with a plan to express the fluids manually if necessary, but thankfully that didn’t end up happening.
I hadn’t saved my game for a VERY long time.
Working on a project, and I hadn’t saved for a few hours.
After that I now save after every small addition to my projects.
I had a vacation cancelled when I was a kid because of the 2003 blackout.
Not power but our hot water heater went out in the dead of winter and we had a well. Our coldest winter is near freezing, not insane but those showers were awful. Ice water shower. I couldn’t adjust ever. The one upside was that I was warm stepping out of the shower, oddly much warmer than after a hot shower.
The trick to showering in cold water is to stand in front of the water stream on low, wash your hands, then rub the water up your arms, keep cupping and rubbing up your shoulders, neck, legs, hair, face, chest, and back. Your hand are pretty tolerant of cold water, and they warm it slightly. As you work around, you’re slowly desensitising your skin to the cold. All the capillaries begin to contract but not all at once sending a shock through your body. After a couple minutes of the rub down you’ll be able to step into the cold stream, still rubbing all over vigorously, without getting a shock. Thereafter, the cold stream doesn’t feel so bad.
The same works for swimming in very cold water. Go in about knee deep, rub the water all over yourself, and eventually you’ll be able to fully immerse and swim without the sudden shock
Hot shower triggers cooling mechanisms in your body, you’ll start to sweat and your body will start moving warmer blood out to the extremities, making you feel cooler as the heat radiates/convects off. When you step out of the warm enclosure into the cooler air, your body is still trying to dump heat so you’ll feel colder.
Basically the opposite happens with a cold shower. Warm blood is kept toward your organs to keep them functioning, so your extremities are chilled by the water. On top, the shower enclosure will be colder than the rest of the room, so you move from a cold area to a warm area, so that instant temperature change makes you feel warmer.
Mid 1990s, winter storm, roads largely unusable, then an ice storm, trees fell over, power outage for days
My brother was on a mountain road in California during a forest fire. He didn’t realize how close it was, and it suddenly broke through the trees along the side of the road. As he was trying to escape--i.e. driving like a madman--a large tree fell across the road behind him just as he passed, like in a movie.
Whatever I was doing I remember many times that happened I just got to watch the night sky
9/11
To be clear, I was nowhere near NYC at the time, but I was kinda glued to the TV, and what was functioning of the Internet, like the rest of the country was there for a few days.
I was working at my power plant and it turned into an 18 hour shift lol
