The Last 48 Hours - NonFiction

Question

Okay. No winners. Sorry. But I'm not getting on enough lately to actually monitor this thread but I think it could be interesting.

Tell a story - anything at all.

BUT!

It must be true. And it must've happened in the previous 48 hours.

I have two to start if I'm not too drunk to write them (haha - seriously).

Let it begin. Yay.

Answer 1

"My Dad Sent Me This Link" by Ron

My father sent me a link to a rap video online.

This is really odd as he listens to Elvis and blues and old stuff and such and he’s seventy-three years old.

I’m a middle-aged man who lives live as an eleven-year-old drunkard. I don’t like rap. I am not at all like Hugh Grant in “About a Boy” where I’m a slight dullard but basically “get it”. I just ain’t.

But what does it say about the world when your old man sends you a rap video and says “You might find this interesting!”

The video is Justin Timberlake and Jimmy Kimmel performing a kind of “history of rap” performance.

Why in the hell would I find that “interesting” and what the hell is my Dad up to?

This isn’t a story. This isn’t about editing.

Was there a memo? Did I miss it?

Are old people into rap too?

WTF?

Comments

When I got up for work last night my wife and kids were watching "that" video on youtube.  I found it very amusing, not for the inept dancing and singing/rapping, but it did communicate a history of rap.  I liked it!

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i'm about as interested in rap as I am in body piercings and facial tattoos.  If my dad showed an interest, i'd really wonder.............

Answer 2

I have a thousand stories about my "nightshift" work, but I'll give you this one that happened 9 hours ago.

Detail

As I do every Thursday, Friday and Saturday I have a “detail” officer as a security guard.  They are actually city police officers who do this “off duty”.  They have full arrest powers, wear guns, their uniforms and are much more effective than “rent a cops”.  Last night a very “high” female wearing little clothing decided to challenge my cop to a verbal battle.  She told him to get “vertical” and she explained to him that she wanted him to be straight up and down parallel to the floor.  This young female could barely stand so he showed her the way to the door.  Outside,  the officer was trying to kindly get her to leave the premises.  She spit on him which to a cop is the wrong thing to do.  After grabbing her and putting her against the building he hit the “panic” button sending officers scrambling to his aid.  She calmed down just enough that he let her loose.  She proceeded to jump on him pummeling him with her fists on his back and head.  That’s when the squad showed up.  She was still trying to injure my officer, but three burly men against a drugged up twenty-something is not much of a match.  She will be facing a long list of charges.

Answer 3

I grew up watching professional wrestling with my family. It's something I remember fondly...the family sitting around, talking, laughing, and yelling at the TV.

We stopped watching it regularly when we got rid of cable. I would still watch it sometimes at friends' houses. A few years ago, my two best friends and I began to have a 'girl's night' every Monday while their boyfriends went to play darts. We spent our girl's nights watching wrestling. Eventually that died out too.

I haven't watched a lot of wrestling in the last couple years, but I've never stopped being a fan. This past Monday I sent a friend a message on FaceBook, telling him that we needed to hang out. He invited me to a TNA Live show that was coming locally.

So, last night, I met him at his job, and we headed out to the show. I got to see one of my favorite wrestlers in action. It was an awesome experience. I missed my two best friends while I was there, but they're hundreds of miles away now. I took a lot of pictures for them.

I was also able to attend the pre-show meet and greet with some of the wrestlers that were there, and after the show, I got to get in the ring and take a picture with Jeff Hardy. Shaking his hand and standing there with his arm around me ranks pretty high on the best 10 seconds of my life.

This isn't supposed to be a great piece of writing, but my life is very dull, and this is one of the most exciting things that has happened to me in a long time.

Comments

Wrestling - hate it - hate everything about it.

But (and isn't there always a "but")

When I was a kid I grew up in Columbia, SC. My Father's parents were from Maryland and I guess there was no wrestling up north" so whenever my Grandfather came to visit my Dad would get us all tickets to WWF wrestling.

What I vividly remember is the cage-matches where they'd strap ten-foot chain link fence around the ring and the fighters would beat all living hell out of each other. I specifically remember this one time where one of the wrestlers was trying to climb over the fence to get out. His opponent followed him up the fence and they proceeded to fight at the top - where the links meet and there are sharp barbs.

I know wrestling today is all fake but I'm talking about 1974 here and I recall the one guy bashing the other guys head down on those barbs and the blood literally spilling out onto the white wrestling ring mat.

Never really been a fan. :-)

Answer 4

High Priorities

It’s about 6:30am.  I’m at work right now.  On the clock.  And (aside from typing out this little yarn) I’m carving a pumpkin.  I am getting paid—overtime no less—to carve a pumpkin.

Every so often, the great thinkers in upper management come up with ways to distract us from our mundane work existence.  Last spring it was an Easter egg decorating contest.  I got saddled with that responsibility too.  And every employee in my department won a forty dollar tax free incentive because I made a hard-boiled egg look like an orchid.

And now it’s pumpkin carving.

My (real) job is fairly important.  It’s a job that is federally regulated.  Just yesterday morning I was on a conference call for two hours putting together a Process Hazard Analysis for this facility.  That is an OSHA requirement.  And it makes the EPA happy too.  It took me a long time to get to where I am on the company food chain.  I received my Ten Year Service Award last month.  It’s an oddly cut crystal on a bronze base, and it has my name on it.  Ten years, man.

And I’m at my desk, surrounded by newspapers, carving a goddamn pumpkin.

I really don’t know if I love or hate my job right now.

Comments

Oh this is really good - exactly what I was looking for - nice - so nice. Yay!

Answer 5

Very bad days  
(An absolutely true story though I wish it wasn’t.)

The last 48 hours for me have been among the least favourite hours in my life.  On Wed I took my cat Ozzy into the vet clinic where I work because I noticed he hadn’t been himself and was not eating.  He’d lost weight and wouldn’t even eat the stinky wet food that he normally would have gobbled right down.  When the doctor examined him he found that he was terribly dehydrated and we had to give him sub0q fluids.  Despite the fact that we pushed nearly 150 cc’s of fluid under his skin it seemed like his body just sucked it right up.  I was already aware that he was sicker than he’d ever been before because he was so calm in the clinic and even let the doctor look in his mouth, normally he’s terrible when he’s there and would even bite sometimes.  His laid back demeanor worried me quite a bit.  We managed to get a little bit of blood out of him, not enough for a full work up but enough to check his organ functions.  All this happened in the morning and I went on lunch before the results were finished running.  I sat at home on my lunch worried but hopeful that we’d find an answer.  When I got back to the clinic the doctor took me aside into his office.  I knew this couldn’t be good if he was thinking we need privacy.  It turns out he was in end stage kidney failure.  His bloodwork indicated he probably no longer had more than 10% of kidney function left.   Kidney failure is very common in elderly cats but Ozzy was only 10 yrs old and this came as a big shock to me.  We could try doing fluid therapy but this would really only buy him a few days and he was probably suffering in the mean time.  I made the decision to euthanize him to save him from having to live in misery for the last few days of his life.  I don’t think I’ve ever cried so hard as I have over the last couple of days.  I’ve had pets throughout my life but they were always the family pets and it was never my decision to end their lives before.  Ozzy was the first pet I’d had that was all mine and he was such a special cat.  He loved to lay out in my lap and just seem to melt into it, he was terribly clumsy, he would give me kisses if I asked him and he would sit up and wave for a treat.  He had the cutest little round face and would frequently sit with his tongue sticking out just a little as if he’d forgotten to put it away.  He will be very sorely missed.

Comments

I am truly sorry for your loss Dragon.  I know the pain you feel isn't something that will go away anytime soon.  But I do hope that the sadness will ease and you can be comforted by all the happy memories you have of Ozzy.  Sending hugs and well wishes your way.

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Thanks inked_gemini.  I appreciate that. :)

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Sorry, Dragon.

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Dang!

Answer 6

KAIDEN

I spent the day yesterday watching my grandson.  He's 4 and a half.  We play card games.  He cheats, but that's OK - because when we play his games, we play by his rules.  If I'm in his room, I can't leave because those are the rules of his room.  I have to sit on the floor and roll trucks around and say "zoom, zoom."  (Not "vroom, vroom" because that's his rule).  We laugh a lot.

He calls me 'Grandpa Ron' because the other one is 'Grandpa Jim'.  It still weirds me out to be called 'Grandpa anything'.

Anyway, here's what happened.  I spent the night as usual.  In the morning, he gave me a present that he had made.  It was a paper airplane folded neatly that probably would have flown - except he glued a paper towel onto the plane's nose with horrific images on it and the paper towel was shreaded.

I thanked him very much and watched his mom make his lunch - time for pre-school.  I was barely awake yet, and seeing this image of an airplane with carnage dripping down its nose made me wonder the same things you are wondering right now.

I was raised in the 50s when we had to respond to air raid drills.  We had to learn to "duck and cover" under our desks in case of an atomic bomb disaster.  Neighbors were building bomb shelters.  

Once, my friend and I were playing in a field when the air-raid sirens went off.  We ran to his house because it was closer.  We were about 8.  All the way there I was saying goodbye to my own parents and siblings.  I had to save my own life, though, so we ran to Mark's house.

When we got there (knees shaking) his mom explained that it was only a drill.

I look at Kaiden's paper airplane catastrophy and wonder if this is something never - ending.  I hung it from my ceiling as a reminder of something I really don't want to think about and I wish Kaiden didn't have those images in his head.

Comments

This IS about the past 48 hours and an old thought it rekindled.  I hope I didn't cross the line.