Ask Lemmy

When I was 16, I took the city bus to school and we had bus tickets that you could buy at the local corner store. The corner store was a 3 block walk from my house, and I was going there one day to buy a sheet of tickets. As I set out walking, a man in a white van slowed down to whistle/shout sexual things, which is sadly something that teen girls experience regularly - that occurrence was just another usual day.

But then, the man started circling the block over and over as a method to follow me. When I hit the Main Street he pulled into a gas station to pause and see which business would go into. And when I entered the convenience store, he parked the white van in front and stood on the front steps smoking and blocking all exit points.

I asked the convenience store clerk if he had a back exit I could run away through. He did not, but the man went to the front steps and yelled at the man and got him to leave. He parked across the street still watching, so I waited in the store until I saw ANY bus coming to the nearby stop and immediately got on. I took that to a crowded shopping mall and passed enough time until I felt that I could get back to what I was planning to do that day.

Life is disgusting for teen girls.

Everyone's hair started levitating. I freaked out and insisted we all leave the mountain top lookout immediately.

Massive bolt hit our prior location about a minute later.

I served a mission for the Mormon church in Russia. One of my companions (the other teenager who is assigned to you as a stranger and must stay within earshot of you at all times for the next few weeks or months) was really enamored with the idea of tracting, or going door to door asking people if they want to talk about Joesph Smith. He had watched too many Mormon missionary movies and was very disappointed to discover the Russian Federation has made tracting illegal. But he really wanted to do it, so we rang a random apartment and claimed to be a postman and snuck into an apartment building to knock doors.

Things started off okay. Russians generally have two doors, a normal wooden door on the inside, and a thick, metal fire door with five deadbolts (three in the wall, and one in the door and ceiling). Mostly, folks would open the inner door, ask what we wanted and then tell us to go away (fair, considering what we were doing was as rude as it was illegal).

But then we got a nibble! A single man invited into his home. The first thing that seemed kinda strange was that he locked and bolted the fire door. This was a little strange — usually people would leave the fire door ajar when they had guests and only lock the inner door — but not enough to really spook me. He led us into the kitchen and made a quick pot of tea and we launched into the first discussion.

The discussions are pretty well rehearsed. The first one, if I recall, has eight parts, and we would give them in sequence — I would do the first part, then say the handover phrase and look significantly at my companion, and he would do the second, then hand it back until either the investigator got bored or we got to the call to action, where we issued some thing we wanted them to do — come to church, pray, read the Book of Mormon, what have you. My companion was starting this round, and was pretty invested in preaching so I don’t think he really noticed as our investigator lit a cigarette, put out the match in a tumbler, filled the tumbler with vodka, and shot the vodka and match together. He made the handoff, though, so at least I could start to figure out a way out of the situation.

Pretty quickly into my segment, he derailed the conversation. Turns out his wife had just given birth to twins, and the prognosis was poor — he was worried they wouldn’t make it. He grasped a kitchen knife and he told me that if God was going to take his newborns from him, he intended to take us from god. I don’t think I ever in my life spoke more fluent Russian, beautiful, flowing, eloquent, explaining it wouldn’t help his suffering and offering prayers and blessings on his children’s behalf. He had this gleam in his eye that really unnerved me, and I really felt I was pleading for my life.

Until my companion finished his tea, and the investigator seemed to forget the whole line of questioning in his haste to be a good host. I quickly made some excuse, but apparently my companion had completely tuned out because he launched into the next part of the discussion as if nothing had happened! I cut him off pretty quick and told him we needed to go, now. When we finally got out of the apartment, I sat down on the top step and began to sob, and my companion looked down at me, amazed, and asked what happened — apparently he had no idea we were ever in any danger.

In any event, I’ve never gone door-to-door soliciting ever again.

It wasn't an immediate turn heel, and leave moment, but my wife and I had talked about moving out of Texas for a while. Mainly driven by our son with special needs. We had been paying tens of thousands dollars a year for therapy and constantly fighting with his school to get the services he needed. Then last year things went downhill fast. We ended up pulling him out of school because one of the teachers told us they found him in the parking lot laying under a car. Not surprised he would do that, he is opposed with cars and especially exhaust systems, but he was supposed to have a paraprofessional with him all day, so we really wondered how he got away like. Unfortunately, he has communication problems, so he couldn't tell us. We had already been in talks with a lawyer about bringing a lawsuit to challenge the services they were offering. But his IEP already said he was supposed to have a para with him. When the lawyer told us it would cost $10-15k just to bring a lawsuit to force them to do what they are already legally required to do, we decided that was it. We were leaving Texas.

We ended up in Connecticut and it was the best decision we ever made. There are so many services here for him. He is truly thriving. My wife and I don't immediately tense up when we see the school calling. I broke into tears during my first meeting with them because it was all about what they could do for him. Versus every meeting ever in Texas where they made us feel like he was a burden on the school.

This is bending the prompt somewhat, but I was once almost struck by lightning. I was walking home through a park, and based on how soon I had been hearing the thunder after each flash of lightning, the storm was basically right on top of me. I was feeling pretty nervous, and tried to take a route with minimal tall trees, but I was a teenager and didn't know what else to do but to keep heading home

All of a sudden, I was filled with a sense of foreboding, and I felt an overwhelming instinct to get away from where I currently was. It was so strong that I dove off to the side, before I heard one of the loudest sounds I had ever heard. Based on where the lightning had seemed to hit, I was very lucky, as it looked like I would have been caught in it had I been standing where I was a moment before. I assume that the wrongness I was feeling before I jumped aside was subconsciously recognising the electric charge buildup in the air or something. I don't know.

Either way, I'm glad I jumped. In an alternate timeline, I'd have dove and felt very silly after nothing at all happened. Or alternatively, I might have jumped aside and still been affected. Who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

My friend and I were ghost hunting in an abandoned ghost town in OR. We were there pretty late in the night and literally heard so many whispers and she swear she saw a man following us so that’s was our queue to leave ASAP.

Not very exciting, but loved hanging out on beaches on the west coast. This one went from a dock to a nice sandy beach that was bordered by a clay cliff. Well, a friend and I roll up and run quite a distance (ah, youthful energy!) exploring along the clay cliffs when the waves get weirdly big and loud. I guess the tide was actually coming in, not going out, and the cliffs weren't climbable. Only way safely out was off the beach and back to the dock. The stretch we were on wasn't even accesible at high tide, totally underwater. My friend was a big fella, but he tucked it in and ran with me like Ive never seen him run before. We were fine, but I remember feeling that realization strike.

Nowhere near as high-stakes as some of the others here, but...

When I was 16 or so, I was hanging out with a few friends and one of them pulled out a joint and a bottle of some kind of liquor, and started passing it around. I got a really bad feeling about it and bailed on it.

Found out the next day that after I'd left, they'd gotten pretty drunk and/or high, and had decided it would be a good idea to take one of their mother's minivan for a drive around their property. They scraped the side of it on something, took off a huge bit of paint, and then decided the best course of action would be to use some spray paint they found in the garage to try and cover it up.

They were all grounded for quite a long time, a fate I managed to avoid by leaving when I did.

In the early 2000s, then-girlfriend and I were at a goth club we went to every weekend. Just had a weird feeling that night and decided to leave early. Someone fatally shot a guy we knew not long after we left. I don't know if they ever found the shooter or the motive. In years of going there, I saw I think two fights ever and it was university fratboys who came to look at the freaks. All in all, we were quite a peaceful crowd (mosh pit nonwithstanding).

Hiking along through tree covered mountains. Days from civilization no cell service. Other side of the country from anyone I know. Dead tired end of a 26+ mile day. Come around a corner and get a view of a massive wildfire off in the distance just the entire horizon ablaze. Bushwhacked through the rough route of a long abandoned and overgrown side trail just trying to lose elevation roughly following a small river. This is why I lug a compass for when things go sideways. Had managed to reach the father of the only local hiker joining on this impromptu bail out route via my satellite messenger. The wildfire smoke was like chain smoking light cigarettes. We eventually found a ride out of there with the father on dirt fireroad we reached after another days worth of hiking to reach it.

Getting onto a train in Stuttgart, Southern Germany.
A strong smell of beer and cigarettes hits me.
Everyone in the train carriage in front of me wears blue and white football jerseys.
And everyone behind me wears white and red.

And they've already started singing songs at each other.

My wife and I were on vacation at a beach town in Europe with lots of really cool old things to see. A local said he knew of a cool thing off the beaten path a little. Like idiots we followed him for a little bit until we realized by off the beaten path a little, he meant completely away from everyone. We noped out of that before he got us completely isolated so he and his friends could likely jump us.

Till reading a couple of the posts, I'd forgotten about this:

I was about 22, and living with my first roommate. He was a decent enough guy, but got rowdy when he drank with friends. I don't drink, but as an introvert who was trying to fit in with "normal" people, I went along with the following.

He had some friends over, they were drinking, but not a lot. One of them speaks up about a woman, his manager at work, who they all seemed to know somehow, and hated. They know where she lives, and that she's not home, so off we all go. I'm just following along, because I want to fit in, and I'm stupid. They break into her house, I go in with them, thinking they might just fuck around and maybe steal some booze, or something. That's all that's going on for a few minutes, then someone says, "I'm going to piss on her bed.", and another one adds, "I'll shit on her bed." That was bad enough, in my mind, but someone else ups the threat and says, "We should kill her cat, where is it?"

'Ugh, what the fuck am I doing here?', I think. So, I tell my roommate, who wasn't making stupid threats, but seemed likely to go along with it, that I was leaving. Fortunately, I had driven my own car, because I learned that lesson long before this incident.

According to my roommate when he got home, they did piss on her bed, but did not kill the cat. I moved out soon after that.

we were planning to stick out a major bushfire that was approaching but we had the truck loaded just in case, done prep work etc then my (f) partner, who was a firefighter, was called by her Captain and he said they are pulling the strike team out as its too dangerous.. i literally said " we are leaving now " and we did and drove though the fire.

In high school in the late 90s, my friends and I were big mallrats. One time one of the workers invited us to a party that night. We didn't have anything to do, so we went. Turns out there's were maybe 20 people there counting us, and the 2 girls that came with me were the only girls there. To make it worse, they were watching hentai on the big screen. And this was the 90s. They had to order that shit somewhere. Anyway, we bailed quick.

Wasn't me but your story reminded me of my fiance on the bus a few years ago.

He was riding the bus with headphones on. All of a sudden he sees everyone on the bus start ducking under the seats except him. He's like hm that's weird what's goin on. Like 5-10 seconds go by and he takes his headphones off and realizes someone was shooting a gun outside and a stray bullet went straight through the bus. Nobody was hurt.

This lady on the street wanted me to get her a Popeye's chicken sandwich, and she offered to pay me back with a blowjob.

That was a wild lunch break.

new casino opened in my small town. took my wife. she wanted to play one slot machine. she lost $20 pretty quick and I begrudgingly pulled another 20. she hit $100 with just $3 more. we cashed out and went home.

2am subway station in Vienna. Had been drinking all night, really had to pee. Walked in to the bathroom, saw dude with a spoon and a lighter doing his crack thing and did a sweet 180 Michael Jackson spin on my rear heel and was out the door before it even closed from my opening it.

Had never seen anything like that in real life but didn't need to look twice.

My family was about to walk into a Target in south Florida when two police cars, driving much faster than was safe for a parking lot, pulled up to the front doors. Their lights were off, but my wife and I made eye contact and turned our kids around.

Generally speaking, officers of the law exceeding the speed limit is always a “avoid this area” signal for me.

Here’s one of mine.

‘04 some friends and I had planned a trip to Canada. We left right before Charley is hitting and really churning up the atmosphere. We made our way up the east coast seeing people we know along the way. Now it’s time to go through the Poconos. It was my vehicle but I wasn’t driving. So I’m watching the clouds and I’m like that looks bad. But we keep driving. I keep watching and finally I’m like no we have to get off now. So we exit and pull into a fast food place as it starts dumping hail on us. We run to the door and people were looking up. We were like what the heck. They said a tornado was spotted and headed this way.

We never saw the actual tornado but yeah that was fun.

I don't have one as dramatic as yours, but a month ot so ago, I was on the bus to the office, I had my Bose headphones on and was half asleep with closed eyes.

The bus were stopped, and I suddenly noticed an acrid smell, like burning plastic.

I opened my eyes and saw the interior or the bus filled with a haze of smoke.

The doors were open and the last few other passengers were spontaneously evacuating.

So I knew I had to leave and got out in 5 sec.

Rural Thailand. About an hour out of Chiang Mai. Bunch of the lads in the Muay Thai gym I trained out of were having fights at this event. Great experience. All going very smoothly and culturally very different (I'd say our small group were the only non-Thais there and we were with a bunch of Thais) which was great.

Now the Thais are very fond of betting on these fights and sometimes the bets are big. Spices things up. Anyway later on in the evening one lad kicks another up and down the ring but the judges call it for the other side.

The crowd went absolutely wild thinking it was a fix (honestly I think it was, it wasn't even close). The judges were starting to get bustled away for their safety and I see some very very irate lad coming with a hammer ready to do some damage.

Funnily enough one of the other Irish lads I was with who spent a long time over there training and fighting was fully chill. I was not haha.

It was a long time ago so I can't remember with certainty if that was the end of the night but I think it was.

Was at a seedy bar with my mate, in a bad area, in a dangerous country. My mate told me we should leave because things were looking sketchy, and we had run out of money. Both of us reasonably drunk. I was starting to get the feeling of panic. We managed to get outside and i ordered a taxi. My mate ran back inside to piss after I had told him don't fucking go back inside. After waiting ages I went back in and found the bar owner pushing drugs onto my mate. This was very very illegal in this country, like jail for foreigners, and my mate was trying to play it cool but whispered to me that it was a very bad situation because he couldn't say no to this guy but he had no cash. Luckily, I had a spare emergency note of the biggest denomination in my pocket which was just enough to cover the drugs. We finally got outside.

The bar owner offered to call us a taxi and when I told him I already had, he seemed very irritated. I don't know what would have happened if we had taken his taxi.

I've ommitted many details so this may seem less scary than it was at the time. But to this day it haunts me, and I wonder how close I came to being kidnapped and ransomed, or blackmailed, or worse.

When you're in foreign countries, don't be stupid. Stay in the safe places. Stay the fuck away from anything sketchy.

Dropped my daughter off at a new school friends house for a few hours of play. While having a little me time decided to rub one out. Fell asleep. Woke up from my timer reminding me to get my daughter (I'm a pro).

So i arrive and the mother is already all over me with stories of her divorce and how her ex is the one causing it (and quite a few highly private stories) and my daughter ignores my not so subtle hints that I want to leave now. (Usually thats all good fun). When suddenly their big ass dog starts taking and interest in my private parts and won't leave me alone. (probably still smelling like jizz.) And their fucking owner doesn't take the hint to control their fucking dog.

So now I start to sweat and mix in some fear and can't run and just grab my kid and go nor can I yell for my kid as there are big ass teeth centimeters away from my crotch.

This goes on for close to an hour escalating slowly to the point that I get mad at the kid, the mother and the dog and just start walking out and cursing.

That day my kid learned code for "danger, leave calmly, leave now". These days they all know a whole hand full of code phrases for: this is no joke, move now.

In 2011, I worked in West Bromwich, greater Birmingham, UK, on Birmingham Road, where it joined High Street. The news had been reporting on riots starting in Tottenham, London, and it was said that they were spreading. One lunch time during this time, I went out to get lunch from a great Indian sweet shop called Dhillons that did an amazing Samosa Chaat, which was about 5 minutes walk down the road from our office. As I got closer, I could see a crowd and police further down the road, not far from the sweet shop, and coming towards me. Then I saw smoke, and turned around, and went back to the office, without my samosa chaat. Loads of busies with full blues and two's on (police cars with sirens and lights on) started whizzing past, towards the trouble, and this continued all afternoon. When I left, the air was cloyed with smoke, and the street towards the sweet shop was cordoned off. The next day we learnt that the sweet shop got smashed up, and their van was torched, one of many that got hit. Nearly got caught up in a riot!

Dude was screaming, to no one, about how much he hates white people, flipping off police cars that drove by, and pacing back and forth. I chilled off to the side, just hoping he wouldn't bother me, for about 5 minutes before I decided to walk to the next stop.

There were a few times in the jail where I had to leave because of fights. I've also gone home a few times because harassment from a coworker disregulated me so badly that I was too upset to stay.

Ten years ago I went to a work colleague's stag-do. I got very drunk off of numerous pints of lager and shots and the night was going great, until we went to a gay nightclub.

Someone in our group got very belligerent with me when he was asking me what kind of drink I'd want. At the time, I thought he was going to seriously hurt me (the alcohol was probably clouding my judgement), so I quietly removed myself from the situation and literally ran from that place.

Unfortunately, the "friend" who I met up with after I bolted took me back to that place because he was more interested in scoring cocaine and dancing with other men than looking out for me.

My first date with my wife, we were waiting to order and someone came up to me and tried to sell me an 8 Ball and some acid.

Was walking from the condo where I lived to the pool hall across the street with my sister. This involved cutting through some bushes and then crossing a sort of busy street with sidewalks on both sides. We successfully made it across to the other sidewalk when a car pulling out of the parking lot turns in our direction. This was all normal. Then another car quickly pulls out of the same parking lot, overtakes him and whips in front of him forcing him onto the sidewalk just a few feet from where we were, like if he hit the gas, he would have run over us. Then an SUV rushed in from behind us along with two other vehicles. Cops jump out with guns drawn and start ordering the guy out of the car while pounding on the glass with the butts of their guns. We're like practically one of the cops we're so close. Obviously the police had no idea two people were going to suddenly appear in their drama from behind some bushes. Glad we didn't get shot or run over. Could have really ruined our evening.

I was smoking weed in an alleyway and some homeless dude (HD1) drew a knife on another homeless dude (hd2) and demanded that HD2 let HD1 buy HD2 some meth.

Sucked because it was behind my apartment so getting out was just going inside.