51 Situations That Escalated Faster Than Anyone Could React

When my 60 year old father told me he broke his hip paragliding into the roof of his hotel.


Edit: I should add it was my parents 60th birthday and this was their "wild spontaneous" event.

Met this conspiracy theorist at a coffee shop. He tells me that all the technological advances since World War II are from aliens. President Truman signed a treaty with them. The aliens dole out microwaves, computers, etc. and in return they can abduct a few people for tests. When that Malaysian flight disappeared the aliens needed a bunch of people.

Was working a job while in early days of college. It was in a popular American restaurant chain where I had been successful as a host, cashier, waiter, and member of their retail store for just about a year. I accidentally forgot that I had swapped shifts with someone and missed the shift entirely. But I came in a few hours after it had started to sincerely apologize and let them know I was going home to change and I’d be right back.


They brought me to the back and told me I was fired. I laughed at first because the boss was occasionally a bit of a jokester. Then I realized he was serious.


To this day it gives me massive anxiety about underperforming in any job I have because I believe I will just be fired for it and they’ll move on regardless of my tenure or knowledge.

This is, essentially, a transcript of a conversation I got to sit in on, between a make-up artist and a teamster on the way to set:

Driver: “Did you see that super-moon last night?

MUA: “Yep! Saw it, and *felt* it!”

Driver: “Felt it?”

MUA: “Oh yeah! I mean, they say that moons - *full moons* - control the tides and the water; and we’re seventy percent water! So it must affect us too!”

This one is followed closely by my “it’s going to rain today, because a few planes just passed over, and chem-trails control the weather” conversation with a camera operator on another show. It was summer. In Malibu. It didn’t rain. Of course it didn’t rain.

Edit: One more springs to mind. I worked with a guy who was in his early 40s and in great shape. He firmly believed that his habit of eating his desserts first at every meal meant that those calories didn’t effect him. I’m no nutritionist, but I’m fairly certain that him doing morning and evening workouts, carrying a medicine ball around all day, and doing push-ups between every camera setup during 12+ hour shooting days was probably more responsible for his health.

Someone once said to my friend " Wait you're Chinese? I always thought you were Asian.".

The gal we rented our apartment from very seriously said, “there is one thing I need to warn you about.” We we’re ready for anything after this somber statement. “The last people who lived here say the apartment is haunted.” We laughed, and said, “haha- you got us! You sounded so serious at first!” She stared at us blankly- she totally meant it.

Back in college, me and a few of my guys would get lunch every Tuesday. Me and two of the guys are there as normal and are waiting for our last guy "Todd". I start texting Todd and asking him about not being at lunch yet. The other guys start narrating what I should text. So I end up saying:

"Matt says get your roly-poly looking a*s over here."

"Steve says that you're the personification of washing your hands and getting your sweater sleeves wet."

It goes on like that for a bit, then Todd calls me directly. He says he can't make it because his grandma died that morning and was headed home to see his family.

The look on the other two guys faces when I told them was priceless.

I had an ex-girlfriend try to claim that we were common-law married so she could sue for alimony and my house, despite:

* Not being together for a year
* Not living in the same home for any length of time
* Not sharing our financial situations with one another in the slightest (no shared bills, no joint account, etc)

The basis for this was that I found it funny when friends joked that we were like an old married couple and I didn't immediately clarify the situation to them, so that meant I'd accepted my role as her "husband".

Took a few court dates and she walked away disappointed, while I walked away with my legal fees and a little extra. I could have gone after her harder, but just what my lawyer got probably wiped out most of her savings and maxed out her line of credit, so I'd have been paying my lawyer to try to wring blood out of a stone.

I play a lot of disc golf and this guy I played with regularly, but is a little off, meets me at a local community college course one day and starts telling me about the last time he played there, and how he threw a shot over the pond and some kids approached it, picked it up and walked off with it. He tells me he yelled at them and told them, “you’ll be sorry next time!”

So as he’s loading up his disc bag, he takes a pistol out of his glove compartment and tucks it in his pants....”just in case they’re there again”...

...on a college campus...

Yeah, I don’t play with him anymore...

A coworker at a restaurant this week told me his hands were hurting from all the extra handwashing and I told him we keep moisturizer in the break room. He asked me why he would need moisturizer if he's been soaking his hands in water so many times in a day.

I explained to a 29 year old man with a house, a car, and a child how soap works.

I listed my Ford Explorer for sale. A guy emailed me to trade his 2018 Kia Forte or something. I didn’t really need one since my fleet already had a 2013 Kia Forte but he emailed me a few times saying he wants my explorer but owes money on his Kia. I said how much. He said it’s an 8 year finance deal so need to pay in total $45k. And he wanted my car. I could buy that car right now for $25-30k at the dealership brand new... he was dead serious.

A former coworker said that it was a CIA conspiracy that the same half of the moon always faced the earth.

That there were no gay people as well as women didn’t start getting emotional before the television was invented and it started showing “all that stuff”. Also that woman don’t get MAN-O-pause (that’s literally how he pronounced it).

There’s a girl at work who used to call the icing sugar ‘talcum powder.’ We didn’t realise for weeks that she actually thought it was called that. She’s actually a pretty switched on girl in general, she just has these weird things.

My friend told me she was an antivaxxer.

"Is there a J in the alphabet?"
This was a year 12 student. Her name was Judith.

*Edit*
This was in rural Australia. No other languages other than English. No religion. No accent other than Aussie. No other cultural background.

For my 14th bday I asked my mom what she got for me. She told me she bought me a vest. I laughed right at her face and went on a rant about how I hate vests (I thought she knew that beforehand). Fast forward to my bday and I received a brand new vest from her. I felt sooooo bad.

I met a girl at a former job, and we took a fancy to eachother quickly. I only ever knew her by her nickname at this point, but we hung out for breakfast and I asked her name. She replied "Bubbles" and I began laughing in her face, thinking its a joke. But no, her parents legitimately named this girl Bubbles, and I just had a deep, hearty laugh at how freakin stupid it was, in her face.

While mountain biking with my friends, being ahead, trying to do some smart a*s thing, slipping and falling down. When my friends meet up.
Me: "stupidly grinning" Guys, I think I broke my arm.
My friends: hahaha. Ya right bro.
Me: "lifting my left arm and showing that it is bending in 3 places now" Umm...
My friends: Umm...
Me: So, who wants to drive me to the hospital.

But honestly, friends were quite helpful in the end. One of them bicycled back to his home and brought his car. I was in the middle of a forest, so remainder of my friends walked me a km and half till where the car could come, loaded me and my mountain bike on it and off I went to the hospital to get my arm fixed. It has become our go to topic now, whenever we meet. We still laugh remembering about it.

At work it's pretty common for people (especially dads in their 40s-60s) to jokingly ask for a discount, so I'm used to being like "haha, no, sorry. wish I could though! :)"

one day a guy who looked like a middle aged dad asked for a discount, so I laughed and said no. he followed up with "why not?" dead serious. ya boy was trying to negotiate a discount. for like no reason, not even like military or AARP, just wanted me to give him like half off his rate for...asking I guess?