5 Gross Things

Coaster Punchman kinda group-tagged everyone to post their gross top 5, and then Dale elevated it to a double dare.

Hmmm. I don't have any stories about soiling myself, but I'll do the best I can.

1) We went out with friends to celebrate MizBubs' 30th birthday. We ended up staying out way too late and getting way too drunk (thank you Bucket o' Suds), and ended up spending the night at our friend's place in Wrigleyville. We woke up late next morning and finally decided to get something to eat after noon; we all decided that noodles and broth might be nice, so we headed over to a Japanese restaurant on Clark Street--I think it was Matsuya. MizBubs ordered some type of noodles with fermented paste of something on top of it. I was suspicious when she ordered it (I suspected she was still a bit tipsy, her judgment clouded) but when it arrived I went from suspicious to disgusted. It smelled, strongly, of rotten cheese. I had to excuse myself from the table, quickly, and gag a little. I came back, and her noodles sat there uneaten for the rest of the meal. It put me off drinking, and Japanese food, for weeks. I can still remember that smell, and it's the first thing I think of when trying to think of something gross.

2) I was a new evidence technician when I got called to the scene of a bad crash. A guy had decided to kill himself by driving directly into the back of a parked semi trailer. He flinched at the last moment so that he only partially decapitated himself, wedging his car underneath the trailer. He left a multi-page suicide note in the car, which I had to retrieve by crawling in through a side window. Another guy basically held my legs as I slid through the opening. When I came out I had bits of brain and goo on my chest, arms and thighs.

3) I got sent to check on an elderly woman, whose neighbors were worried about her. The mail and newspapers were piled up on the front porch, and her car was in the garage. We forced the door open, and were hit in the face by the smell of shit and garbage, and something burning on the stove. The entire front room was filled with stacks of papers and garbage about 3-5' tall, with a narrow walkway toward the back of the house. The burning smell was coming from two hot dogs in a pot on the stove; the water had boiled away and the dogs were two smoldering, black ashy tubes. We couldn't find the lady who lived there, but judging from the smell we knew she was dead. Then we heard a very slight voice say "help." We made our way into a bathroom, forcing that door open as well. The floor, bathtub and walls were smeared with shit and blood. The woman, a degenerate drunk, had fallen off the toilet, probably a day or so earlier, and was wedged in between the wall and the toilet. Hurray for firefighters, America's heroes--they came in to get her out of there and took her to the hospital. That was the first time I got exposed to tuberculosis.

4) I had a black standard poodle, basically the finest dog I've ever known. Smart, funny, loyal and brave. Unfortunately, he had a phenomenal knack for finding old bandages and used feminine hygiene products. Finding them and then sauntering into a room full of people, happily chewing away on his prize.

5) Number 5 is a tossup between a dead guy who had a really interesting maggot mass under some skin that had slipped on his leg, giving his leg a shimmery, undulating appearance, and the dead guy, stuck to his kitchen floor, whose arm popped off when we tried to move him.