Tell us something about you that sounds FAKE

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When I was in college I spent my summers landscaping apartment buildings. One day I hear this couple arguing in a truck about 30 feet from me. All of a sudden "BOOM" - shot rings out. The woman tumbles out of the truck and I figure he shot her. I'm trying to figure whether to try to grab her or take cover when she gets up runs to me and says "HE SHOT HIMSELF HE SHOT HIMSELF."

This was before cell phones. I tell her to go call an ambulance and I move in on the truck, peering in from the open passenger door. I see a small handgun on the floorboard, so I'm relieved there. Looking at the guy he's bleeding from his gut onto a wife beater shirt. Looks at me with glassy eyes. So I get in and take a look at the wound. There are some intestines trying to poke through the hole.

So I just kinda gather up the shirt and put pressure on it. He was kinda going in and out, I suppose due to the internal bleeding. Ambulance got there in like 5 mins, I was outta there and never knew how it came out.

[As an aside, being the OP, based on the stories presented here I can certainly see why y'all are fearless boaters!]
 
If we are talking about celebrities:

Back in the early 70's, I raced sports cars at SCCA events. Back in those days, the pits were just spaces in the parking lot and they did not separate the big boys from us amateurs.

I was trying to take a ball joint apart without proper tools at Riverside. I hear a voice "that's the hard way to do that, try this". I turn around and Carroll Shelby is standing in front of me with a ball joint tool in his hand. I am completely flabbergasted and speechless. He hands me the tool and points to his pit area and tells me to return it when done.

Shelby was racing Dodges or consulting to Chrysler at that point and so I did not realize that he was in attendance. I did have further conversation with him over the weekend after I got my voice back.

In addition to Shelby, I got to set up my pit next to Roger Penske, Dan Gurney and a few other famous drivers and team owners at various tracks on the west coast.

Another time more recent and during boating, we were dining at the Cordero Lodge in British Columbia near Desolation Sound. A table full of people were next to us and we started up a conversation. My friend, who was a national limited boat racing champion started talking to the other table about engines. An older gentleman seemed to know a lot and we engaged in a conversation with him.

We were talking about race engine intake manifolds and my friend, who probably had consumed a few drinks says to the guy "you don't know anything about race engines". I thought oh oh. Everybody at both tables laughed and continued our conversation.

The other party departed after a while, got into a 25' or so Boston Whaler and took off.

Doris, the owner of the lodge comes over and says to my friend "you don't know who that was do you?" When my friend says no, Doris says "that's Vic Edlebrock". My friend was so embarrassed. He still feels embarrassed after 15 years.
 
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Some of these undoubtedly true stories remind me of the UK BBC TV series "Would I lie to you?"
Here`s a sample clip: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p048sc8d
Lots of others to help fill in time while sequestered at home.
 
This boat was a 17 foot trihull runabout with a 70 or 75 hp Chrysler engine. As I was coming out of the inlet with Mom and Dad a large SD hull boat swamped us and water filled the boat. Bilge pump failed, engine still running, battery under water so feet were tingling like mad. We thought if I could steer near shore we'd could bail out the water. So got it near beach but it turned sideways and waves were moving it around too much to do much of anything. Just total stupidity on my part. So thats why I am such a safety nut now.
 
ah yes, a 450' Lagoon Catamaran

Sabre602 said:
Um, that's a whole lotta catamaran! :nonono:
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My thoughts exactly but, he was telling the story. Who am I to say he was stretching the boat a bit.
My first thoughts were going back to my Navy days..... Stories often started with "Once upon a time...." or "This is no ****....", this has to be one of those stories.
 
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Speaking of celebrities, The years we had a boat in Santa Barbara we had quite a few that had boats in the marina and sort of hid from the public there. A close slip neighbor was Kevin Costner.. never will forget the summer he got his boat and worked on getting up to speed on boat handling.. was pretty comical. He was a really nice guy.. treated his kids really well. I was standing in the chandlery one day looking at boat magazines ( remember the good old days of LOTS of boating mags) and this scruffy looking guy asked for me to hand him a copy of Wooden Boat. As I did I realized it was David Crosby.. of ex, Crosby,Stills, Nash and Young.. quiet guy that always shuffled around looking like a bum. Funny connection is years later I spent a few nights aboard Neil Young's boat.

HOLLYWOOD
 
A few weekends after learning to ski in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, me and a buddy John make the trip to a mountain in Vermont called Killington. Our plan was to first take the lift to the peak and run the green circle trail off the the side. As we neared the peak, John had a 35 MM SLR camera and wanted to take a picture of the stunning view. Well the damn camera cover fell off onto the slope below. Aw crap! Lets go get it. "But its a black diamond" says me, the cautious one. "How hard could it be?" Spoiler alert, trail name Cascade runs straight down the lift line for like 1.5 miles. A black diamond at the Poconos and a black diamond at Killington are as similar as a tabby cat and a tiger. Trying to transition left to right means for a second your skis are pointed downhill. It was like getting shot out of a cannon. Go left, crash, go right, crash. Eventually we could see the camera cover still slowly rolling down the slope. Someone who really knew how to ski came past us and picked up the cover. "Hey, is this yours?" "Yea be there in a minute." John mustered up his courage and headed straight for the guy. He bounced and crashed in a big cloud of snow at the guys feet. "Thank you!". Somewhere halfway down Cascade a green circle trail cut across so we bailed to the base lodge. Our running inside joke for years was "How hard could it be?"
 
Wow! You guys are bad ass! I’ve done some exciting things in my life. I’ve raced hydroplane boats and I’ve flown hang gliders, ultralights, and various general aviation planes including seaplanes.

I think the most exciting thing I’ve done was to feel the shockwave produced by the Saturn V of Apollo II as it lifted off. I like to say I was closer to the rocket than Walter Cronkite.

Ok, celebrity story. I once spent several hours with Buzz Aldrin. A friend had talked him into posing for a life sculpture. This involved covering Buzz with plaster. I was invited to photograph the process. My friend’s wise ass son was there and asked Buzz if the Moon was really made of cheese. Buzz said with a very serious expression, “Sure is, American cheese”. I’ve never been prouder to be an American.
 
OK, emphasis on the “sounds fake” part here, based on the mother lode of all fake-sounding tales—the fish story.

My son was beach-fishing by a jetty at Fort Moultrie near Charleston, SC using a Carolina rig. He hooked a fish, which quickly wrapped his line around a rock and broke off. He re-rigged, cast out a few times and, on a retrieve, initially felt resistance followed by a fight. He had hooked the eye splice on his lost leader and the fish (a nice flounder) was still on the hook.

Nobody ever believes this story when we tell it and we always say: “prove it didn’t happen.”:D
 
IH82BL8 said:
I've used the Heimlich maneuver in an actual emergency situation, successfully, on the first thrust.

Certified Full Cave diver, NACD and NSS/CDS.

I always stop to rescue a turtle from the middle of the road. Did it yesterday.
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I do too. Many box turtles still crawling around because I got them off the road and into the woods. Got a letter last week from a box turtle grandmother thanking me.
 
I have lived a pretty mundane life. The only improbable thing I have done was to teach at CalTech. I was a visiting professor there.
 
Another fish story, was on a "cattle" boat fishing about a mile off the west end of Catalina. Approximately 33 anglers, I was using my buddies grandfather's rod, which he had insisted I use. Got into a crazy Bonita bite, got broke off. Rerigged in a hurry without any weight, and the bite stopped for me, my buddy recommended I add lead, so I leaned rod against the rail and turned towards the tackle box. Immediately I hear a yell, turn and see my buddies grandfather's rod flying through the air, hit the water and disappear. Fifteen minutes later, my buddy hooks up, I gaff the fish. It has a line wrapped around its tail, I bring the fish in, pull the line in and it's my buddies grandfather's rod. We tell the deckhand what just happened, his response was "it happens all the time"
 
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Gulf Comanche said:
I do too. Many box turtles still crawling around because I got them off the road and into the woods. Got a letter last week from a box turtle grandmother thanking me.
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So you stop to assist a box turtle on the road. You drive off and one turtle says to the other, "What do you mean, I'm on the wrong side of the road? I'll be there in 30 minutes." SPLAT
 
I rode a mountain bike around the crater rim of Diamond Head.
 
I did almost 21 years in prison.

With the keys. Still amazes me anyway....
 
Spent 4 years in college learning forestry, got accepted to Yale graduate school of forestry, and been in telecommunications ever since.
 
I was in my seventh year as a trooper on the interstate highway patrol when I re-enlisted in the US Navy and was ordered to a ship deploying to the Viet Nam combat zone.
 
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I got kicked out of the State of Michigan, escorted to the border and told not to come back!

I didn't have a motorcycle helmet on and didn't have one with me.

pete
 
The first date I went on with my future wife she suggested we go to a bar she worked at. Turns out that was the night they started to offer woman's Jello wrestling without her knowledge.
 
lollygag1 said:
the first date i went on with my future wife she suggested we go to a bar she worked at. Turns out that was the night they started to offer woman's jello wrestling without her knowledge.
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and????
 
Lollygag1 said:
The first date I went on with my future wife she suggested we go to a bar she worked at. Turns out that was the night they started to offer woman's Jello wrestling without her knowledge.
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"... without her knowledge" Wink, Wink! :lol:
 
After I asked her what time her match was and she punched me in the arm. We then went to a grungy food truck and hung out on city hall steps. We have been together ever since.
 
klee wyck said:
Sounds fake but is actually true.......well, let’s see how this goes over.
I spent twenty years with my right arm up a cow’s ass.
(Can I say ass here?)
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A vet doing artificial insemination..?
 
Maybe he won a bet, and is just really into that kind of thing.
 
Shoulder length rubber gloves for when you dare to boldly go where no man has gone before.
 
One of my brushes with the law.

Went on a month long rock climbing trip to Joshua Tree. In the old 'hippie style' Volkswagen van were myself and another laid off forestry worker, an unemployed migrant fruit picker, and my girlfriend.

At the border heading south they wouldn't let us into the USA. Apparently you needed to have $20,000.00 in the bank and a job to go back to. We went to the next border crossing east and told them we were going hiking on the Olympic Peninsula, so we got in.

After a month of dirtbag climbing and tenting under an overhanging boulder we headed home and stopped in Carmel so I could check out some photography galleries. We parked the van in a strip mall parking lot and were lounging around outside of the van eating veggies & cream cheese wrapped in enchilada shells, when a cop stopped to chat with us.

"How long you folks expecting to be in town?" We got the hint. Guess we contrasted too much with the Mercedes, BMW's, and the fairly well primped & preened residents of Carmel.

On the way through the border back into Canada, they asked, "How long was your visit to the USA?"

"One month".

"How much do you have to declare?"

"Nothing".

"Please park the vehicle over there". Don't think they looked too hard once they found our stinky rock climbing shoes :D

35 years later, she's still my girlfriend :thumb:
 
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