8. Pennies from Heaven, Strength from Hell
I worked at a music venue downtown in my city. Every Saturday was a mix of punk rockers and metalheads who came down for 80s night. This disheveled dude stumbled in and walks up to the bar. He: long greasy hair, a bloodied busted lip with two matching black eyes, reeking of whiskey and a bad attitude. Me: six hours into a PBR drinkers shift with a tip bucket full of change and the occasional dollar.
He orders a PBR and hands me a $10. I give him $5 and two singles. I go to turn to the cooler to grab his drink, and he yells something along the lines of, “Where’s the rest of my freaking money?!” I snap back, tell him he gave me a $10, and turned the till to show him the empty $20 spot. We didn’t keep large dollars in the register, because we dealt in pocket change for $3 tall boys and $5 40s.
As I go to grab the register and turn it back towards myself, ignoring his demand for money, I feel the damn thing slip between my fingers as I watch this freaking fool lift it over his head. I hear people yelling as they realize what’s about to happen, while I drop behind the bar in hopes he doesn’t bash my brains. In a matter of seconds, I hear the most animalistic growl and heave as I watch the freak toss the register over my head, flying right into the glass bar.
This was the mother of all oddly satisfying sounds, a giant bar mirror with six glass shelves, fifty plus glass bottles of liquor and assorted beer breaking into bits and raining down all around me. In the darkness, the neon lights shining through the glass mimicking sparklers shooting out of the wall where an entire bar stood a moment earlier.
It all happened in a minute, feeling like an eternity. Then it all ended swiftly as the bouncers moved in, picking this guy up over their heads, throw him down two staircases, toss him out the door and beat the dog-snot out of him. It was just another Cincinnati Saturday night.
9. It’s a Bug’s Life and Death
I watched an epic fight between a spider wasp and a huntsman spider. It went on for about ten minutes and was like a kind of mini Godzilla: King of the Monsters vibe. It ended with the spider wasp winning and dragging the spider back into a big hole in my garden wall. It was freaking intense. Australian wildlife is metal AF.
Wikimedia Commons, Toby Hudson
10. The War Inside Me
My grandpa survived three brain tumors. They removed large parts of his brain, though, and he had multiple grand mal seizures. He averaged almost one seizure a day IIRC. Regular treatment wasn’t really working, so his AMAZING surgeon guy put electrodes in his brain that stopped the seizures for a good seven months. My grandpa was a cyborg for a short amount of time.
That, and he was given up as a kid. Tortured because his parents abandoned him to a state school, where they electrocuted him because they misdiagnosed him with autism. He was called in for the draft for Vietnam pretty much as soon as he was able. They rejected him for his mental health background, to which he stubbornly said, "Screw you, I'm enlisting" and he said Vietnam was easier than his childhood in a lot of ways. He spent his life advocating for autistic rights.
If you don’t believe me, they wrote a book about him. You'll Like It Here by Ed Orzechowski. My grandpa was a Vietnam veteran cyborg who fought for autistic rights. I loved that man so much. The book is largely about his childhood and advocacy. Not so much about being a kickass cyborg man. It is a really good read, though, and everyone I know who has read it has really loved it.
Bit of a tearjerker.
11. The More the Merrier
Punk rock, not metal, but kids were getting kicked out of a show by security for stage diving. The band stopped their set to invite everyone on stage to sing with them, cause "you can't kick out everyone." I can't remember the band for sure, but I wanna say it was Rancid.
12. At Least She’s Headstrong
Old lady I used to take care of was an aircraft mechanic in her youth during WW2. She fought me tooth and nail every time I went in to help her. One day in the dining room, she fell out of her wheelchair and busted her head wide open. She was 95. Blood everywhere. This lady STANDS UP, blood running down her face. We rush to help her, she looked me dead in the face and said, “Screw off, I don’t need any help.”
We called an ambulance.
13. A Most Delicious Home Remedy
I worked for a catering company and we were catering a party on a ranch in the middle of nowhere. It was over a one-hour drive to the nearest town. It was early in the day and we were doing prep when one of the cooks cuts her hand open. It’s a deep cut across her left palm, blood is pouring out. Before we could react and get help, she grabs a chef's knife and sticks it in a gas burner and it gets red hot.
She then slaps the red-hot knife onto the cut, cauterizing it. She then slathers her hand in mustard (mustard will stop the pain from a burn), goes over to the nearby bar and pours some whiskey over the cut to "clean it.” Finally, she wraps her palm with some tape from the med kit, puts a rubber glove on, and GOES BACK TO WORK! She finished the shift, over 12 hours, and never complained.
Absolute beast.
14. Dinner for One, or Else
Turning off the highway onto a road that leads into a small country town, there was a deer carcass rotting underneath the sun that was likely the result of a vehicle hit. Feasting on the corpse was a bald eagle, with its beak stained red from his free meal. I slowed down to observe, and he spread his wings out as if to show his dominance.
Once in a lifetime sight.
15. Sowing the Seeds of Content
My aunt got a radioactive seed implanted in her liver as part of last-case-scenario cancer treatment. It had to be transported in a huge led box, her bed had lead plates on them that were like walls, none of us could touch her or sit near her because she was radioactive. She didn’t get any superpowers, which sucked, but her attitude throughout is what made it really metal to me.
When things are bad enough that having a radioactive seed implanted inside your body is a good idea, then things are pretty damn bad. She had a 50% chance of dying 24 hours after having it implanted. She found out a little while later that it didn’t work. Her words when she came out of the room after being told she was terminal were, “Whelp, that’s me stuffed, isn’t it?”
I miss her.
16. Heavy Metal Rock
Astronomer here! I visited the Hoba meteorite in Namibia when I was backpacking around southern Africa after college. It is the largest single meteorite known on Earth, and the largest single piece of naturally occurring iron we know of on the Earth's surface. At 60 tons, it's basically too big to ever move since a farmer discovered it (IIRC, he hit it with a plow).
Yes, there are cranes that can lift more than this. However, you would have to get it to Namibia and then to this remote site in the desert over crummy roads, so I’m sure it was just a tad unfeasible. They definitely chipped off pieces of the meteorite though. I know because we had one in our university’s meteorite collection. Without question the most metal thing I've ever seen.
17. Head to Head
I was sitting at the lunch table at school, eating my square pizza. About three tables in front of me, I see this huge kid doing "the stride" towards this other kid gallivanting with his friends. You know, the stride where you know stuff’s about to hit the fan. Bigger kid walks up behind the other dude and SLAMS his head on the table. It shook the entire lunchroom, and everyone stood up. This guy is just repeatedly banging this kids head into the table and there's blood pooling everywhere. I thought he had killed him with how much blood there was.
Anyways, kid was okay, and bigger kid was expelled, and I ate my square pizza and carried on.
18. The Savoir Is Born…For Now
My dad is the most timid Christian man in the world. Few years back, we were hanging our Christmas lights and setting the yard decorations out. My parents have a metal framed nativity scene with the whole gang (three kings, and the others, animals, etc.). It's a pain to put together. My dad ended up so frazzled, he took a pole from it and just started to beat the snot out of baby Jesus.
This resulted in a beloved story told annually about how dad brutally murdered baby Jesus.
19. Moooove It or Lose It
Two lines of angry bikers on a four-lane road stopped and blocked traffic to create a road crossing for a family of moose. Bikers weren't actually angry, and my dad was among them. It was his biker club. No backpatch, no selling of drugs, just a bunch of friendly guys who liked to ride motorcycles. I was five at the time. We were in Norway.
Extra metal part at the end as moose dad decided that a pair of extra tall handlebars on a motorcycle was a challenger to his authority. The rider was the club longbeard...He essentially looked like a biker Santa Claus. He revved his bike; moose dad begins roaring back until the motor noise gets big enough for him to run.
20. It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s a Fan!
Me and a buddy of mine were mid-crowd at a Dragonforce show in 2005. We were helping people get up for crowdsurfing, and it had been about 15 minutes at this point. My friend looks at me and says, "Well, I gotta go, it's my turn now" and without even saying anything, he makes a Superman pose. The guys right in front of us, without saying anything, just boost him up and he is passed to the front in that pose. Hilarious.
Another time, Bill Kelliher of Mastodon was flicking his picks into the crowd at the end of a show, and one hit me in the eye and got stuck. That's how I earned one of my concert picks.
21. You Almost Nailed It
Shot myself in the thumb with a 16-penny nail from a nail gun. The metal part was when I removed it with a pair of vice grips. As it scraped across my bone, I passed out. I learned the meaning of "when the bullet hits the bone."
22. The Beginning of a Cuddly Revenge Story
I saw a falcon attack a squirrel’s nest and it kept going back for the babies, tearing them apart, then throwing them to the ground. Then the parent squirrel jumped at the falcon and it literally tore the poor thing's head clean off. Its headless body fell to its mangled children.
23. Paging Tony Stark…
When I was a medical student, during cardiothoracic ward rounds I saw a patient. The fellow warned that it was pretty gruesome. Approximately 70-year-old male, Day 15 post valve replacement (open heart surgery) with a background of an intellectual disability, poorly controlled diabetes, kidney disease, lifelong smoker. The surgery went fine, and he was out of ICU a few days later.
Only thing was, once he was conscious enough, he would try to get out of bed using his arms, which is a big issue when your sternum is held together by wires. After a few days, his sternum has essentially turned into an infected mush. The surgeons had to open up his chest, remove the wires, and leave it exposed to clear the infection.
So, I walk into the room and there is this man with a hole in the middle of his chest. A pink, black, red, yellow mess... Despite the warning, I was not prepared. The ward round went on as normal with me in the background, jaw open. The consultant starts talking to the patient. He responded in a very exasperated way, flexing his pec muscles, opening his chest up another 10cm left to right with a squelch…
I saw him a few weeks later out the front of the hospital having a cigarette, open chest and all. Two years later, I haven’t seen anything near as metal.
24. Hanging in There By a Thread
A man in the ER just chilling with half of his freaking arm hanging from a few threads of what I suppose was muscle and skin, playing some game on his phone while a nurse tried to get a doctor to help (we don't really have a good emergency system here, few doctors and a huge amount of disorganization makes it a mess). The man just laughed it off saying, and I quote (well, translate) as this got engraved in my mind.
"Haha, no worries, I'm not dying, I just had an accident.”
25. Can I “Ring” Up Your Order?
I worked at Taco Bell when I was like 17 and I got a few friends from school a job there too, including this kid that had like a million piercings. He had his nipples pierced twice, up and down and across, like a plus sign. This is important. Our drive-thru window wasn’t automatic and you had to push it out with this like...latch? Handle? It was like an L shaped piece of metal. Anyway, I can’t count how many times I got my shirt sleeve caught on it from reaching out the window.
One day, someone pulls up really far away from the window and he leaned all the way out, caught his right nipple on the latch thing, and got caught. He panicked. He pulled, violently. The whole nipple more or less came off. There was blood all over drive-thru and he had to be taken to the hospital. We had to close the restaurant down for the rest of the day and like specialist had to come in and clean up the blood.
It’s something I’ll never forget.
26. No Metal Stronger Than Mother’s Metal
My mother dearest always had lots of problem with her inside baby-making parts. She has had a lot of surgeries done—to the point where all her stomach area is numb. I guess the apple does not fall far from the tree. Guess who started having the same problems? Me! However, mine took a step further. I had an unsuspecting cyst growing in my ovary. Didn’t feel a thing until it started trying to tear out of the ovary (5 lbs.).
Excruciating pain, ambulance & a long emergency surgery—had to have the ovary taken out. Was knocked out for two days. Third day, gain consciousness. After about 10 days, I gotta start walking so that the stitches settle and all that jazz. So, they bring two nurses and a walker when I’m ready and I’m like wtf? I can walk.
I don’t need support to walk. They help me sit up on the edge of the bed and GUYS. As soon as my feet touched the ground & I tried to stand, this pain that was out of this universe shot through me and knocked me unconscious on the spot. Woke up 30 mins later. Doc said they had legit cut open and stitched my body back together—inside and out—and I can’t just put pressure on it.
However, since I was young, they said I should be able to slowly start walking in about three weeks and return to usual activity in about 3-4 months if everything healed properly. So, the reason I’m telling you this is because at that moment, I remembered the countless number of surgeries of this type, and some even more extensive my mother had.
Every single one of them scheduled on a Friday. She’d be back at the house on Sunday. On Monday, she was up at dawn to make me and my sister food and lunch for school and dinner. She would wince, but I never understood why until that moment. She was back on her feet and resumed taking care of her family on Monday with tubes and stuff hooked and attached to her.
I never understood or comprehended the kind of pain, and intensity of it that she went through. Took me a year almost to be able to jog without the scar throbbing and THIS WOMAN FREAKING DEFIED ALL PAIN TO MAKE SURE HER CHILDREN WERE TAKEN CARE OF. THERE IS NOTHING MORE METAL THAN MY MOTHER.
27. You’re Tearing Me Apart
Had an inmate slice his arm open with a razor before swallowing it. While we waited for backup, he calmly sprayed blood all over the cell and counted. Then, when he’d lost enough blood, he tore a strip off of his shirt, tied it around his arm to stop the blood loss and cuffed up. Dude was just a bit crazy.
28. Feel the Burn (Because He Can’t)
A guy people call “Barbarian” is a friend of my family. One time, we were having a good time, barbecue, pool, and beer. Barbarian was cooking the meat on one of those old kilns with incandescent coal. One guy was trying to light up a cigarette, but he didn't have a lighter. Barbarian sees that, grabs an incandescent coal with his bare hands, lights the cigarette in the guy's mouth, and put the coal back in the kiln, like NOTHING.
Jesus...
29. The Ride of a Lifetime, Apparently
We were at Six Flags. Megadeath was playing (it was near Halloween) and we were waiting in line for Superman Ride of Steel, which is a big coaster with a 200+ ft drop. We waited in the front row line, but as soon as we got up to the gate, the lead singer and drummer were ushered to the front of the line and asked if they could squeeze in.
We said sure and sat in the second row behind them. After the first big drop, they were literally going nuts the whole ride. Once it finished and we flew into the loading area again I just hear the lead singer scream and raise the devil horns "I FREAKING LOVE THIS PLACE!!"
30. Now That’s What I Call a Fresh Meal
Me and some friends were camping in the woods, and one of my friends has an obsession with fire, which is close to serious pyromania. So naturally, our campfire was really big and bright. Additionally, we blasted some Rammstein. One of my friends, who was pretty drunk, decided that it would be a good idea to sharpen a wooden stick and go hunting.
Nobody expected that he would catch anything, but he somehow managed to spear a baby rabbit, or at least to stumble over the body of one. The corpse already looked like he just scared the original predator away. So, he comes back out of the woods, the bloody spear in his left, and the dead baby rabbit in his right, walks past the gigantic campfire, while our stereo is blasting Rammstein's Sonne, rams the spear into the ground, tears the rabbit in half and throws the carcass into the fire.
31. I Love a Film Reference
I was at a show for some hardcore band, I think Whitechapel, down in Wilmington NC, with a bunch of other Marines. We were just out looking to get drunk and rowdy, and hardcore shows seemed to be a good place for it...anyhow, at the venue (Soapbox Lounge, looks like it's closed now) security would generally let a person climb up on stage every once in a while as long as they turned and did their stage dive and the show went on.
So, middle of the show, some kid climbs up there, jumps around with the bassist for a second, and then gets on the front of the stage, but just poses and doesn't dive. He's just standing in the middle of the stage drinking in the atmosphere and basking in the chaos. Security starts slowly working their way over to this kid, but the bassist he was just jumping around with plays his way up behind this guy, turns a little, and "This is Sparta" kicks the dude out into the crowd. Full on punts him.
The house went nuts. No idea what happened to the kid, but that's what ya get. I think I got both of my eyes blackened in the pit that night. Good times.
32. I’m All Ears About This Piercing Journey
My mother piercing her own ears with a pair of stud blunt-metal earrings. I almost threw up watching her pierce her own ears with literally NOTHING but her hands and those earrings, and she straight up just...shoved it through her ear, no previous piercing hole. In both ears! Earrings are not made for that, they're so blunt!
Sure, they hurt if you step on them or try to stab someone with it, but to get it through that much tissue? Holy Shoot! And it bled! Oh my god, did it bleed! I didn't even mean to watch, I just walked into her room as she happened to do it. I wanna consider myself a tough woman, but, like, shoot. Metal as HELL.
33. Open Eyes, Open Ears, and Open…
I once saw a guy intentionally cut his own throat open. It was on one of my mentored shifts while I was studying to be a paramedic (EMT for you Americans). We got a pretty vague-sounding call that this guy had hurt himself, and so we were dispatched to his home. When we drove down his driveway, we saw him standing on a balcony looking down at us. He said, “Thank God you’re here! Watch this!” and proceeded to pull a knife blade across his throat.
Luckily, he didn’t sever his carotid arteries, and had minimal damage to his trachea. Impressive amount of blood though. We got him to hospital in a stable condition, but I have no idea what happened after that. He was obviously quite mentally unwell, and our country’s mental health care leaves a lot to be desired, but there’s always a chance he made a good recovery.
Reflecting back on the incident afterward though all I could think was that was the most metal thing I’ve ever witnessed.
34. Cat Got Your Tongue?
I was like 10 and walked out onto my back porch to see my cat hunched over something. Here’s some visuals to put it into perspective: My cat was a beautiful stripey gray and white American Shorthair with icy yellow eyes, and he was constantly in stalk-mode. He had the face of a very small gray lion and did not blink much.
He looks up at me, staring directly into my soul, and his usually white chin is completely coated in blood. I walk up to him and look down. He’s snapped this pigeon’s neck and ripped its torso open so that its ribcage is sticking out and upwards like an anatomical model. I can see literally all of its organs, heart still beating, foot twitching.
My cat slowly blinks at me, then eats the entire liver of the pigeon in one bite and walks back into the house. I think my cat embodied Satan just a little.
35. The Star Treatment in Charity
I worked at a recording studio in LA for nearly ten years. We had Slayer in to make a record. The first day, Tom Araya comes out to the reception area with a white cardboard box and says, "I just printed a picture from my laptop. Where would it have printed?" I told him it would most likely have printed in the office and grabbed it for him. It was a printout of a photo of a 12-ish-year-old girl in a white dress. He then asked for a pair of scissors and some tape.
He proceeded to cut the photo out, and then he opened the white box, which was full of candy bars and was one of those fundraiser boxes with a money slot that you see kids carrying to sell candy for their school. He taped the photo to the folded open box, and said, "I told my niece I would help her with her elementary school fundraiser. Is it okay if I leave this up at reception? The candy bars are a dollar, if any of you would like to buy one."
We all bought multiple candy bars. Slayer was in for a couple of weeks, and he was the nicest of guys.
36. What Goes Around Comes Around
There was an article about a rapist who threw gasoline on his victim and proceeded to light her up in an effort to shut her up for good. She dragged him into the flames to burn with her.
37. The Cutting Edge of a Good Work Ethic
My boss drilled into his hand when a bit slipped. Got his knife out. Picked the filings of steel that got into his hand. Got the alcohol and poured it over. Slapped crazy glue to "close the gap" and drove to the hospital. The crazy part is that his face never changed. No emotion at all. Shout out to my other co-worker that had two of his fingers get caught on a rolling machine and torn apart.
He just turned around and said, "Help me guys" in the most nonchalant way.
38. She Knows When to Fold Them
One of my friends has Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, far worse than myself. I remember once her foot fell out from under her on a staircase. She slipped down and ended up a curled and contorted mess, having dislocated both shoulders and twisted her legs underneath her. Before I could even get down the stairs and help, she started popping her joints back in and untangling herself...it was like watching a marionette build itself from a pile of parts.
Either truly metal or nightmare fodder.
39. Gotta Roll With the Punches, No Matter What or Where
When I was a kid, we were out riding bikes around during summer break. I saw some of the older high school kids come ripping around the corner on the back streets of my town in a VW bug, and they rolled it. Passenger window was open and no seatbelts. Passenger got ejected, flew about ten feet through the air, head over heels, and landed on his feet. The bug had rolled back onto its wheels, and he gave us a thumbs up and jumped back in the car and they drove off.
Blew my freaking grade school mind. It was cooler than anything I ever saw on Dukes of Hazzard...
40. Ice Cream, You Scream
I saw three deer corner a small child and eat his ice-cream. Child was screaming like Dio whilst his Japanese mother filmed the whole thing, cackling to herself. Metal.
41. The Only Limit Is Your Prejudice
A long time ago in elementary school, I was peripherally aware of a kid in a wheelchair who we all basically knew as "the crippled kid.” He was younger than me, so I didn't have much overlap with him, except seeing him getting loaded and unloaded from his family's van each morning and afternoon. Jump ahead in time to middle school. Not sure what year, but it was when Spiderman 2 came out because that's what we were going to see in theaters.
My and my crew are having a true expedition, which means friends of friends are invited, and small world, turns out "crippled kid" is a friend of a friend. I haven't even seen him since elementary. (Our school system has four elementary schools and one middle and high school, so once you get out of your tiny pool and wade into the sixth grade, people you used to see all the time can disappear in the massive flood of new people).
We arrive at the theater's parking garage, and there's no spaces on the bottom level of course, so up to the top we go. We get the wheelchair set up and "crippled kid" gets in it and starts wheeling himself along. Eventually, we hit the part of the parking garage where the rather steep, downward slope is. There is a speed bump in the middle of this slope.
Before I can even process that I just heard this kid say "Wanna see me jump it?", wheels from behind me are burning freaking rubber. I watch in literal AWE as this magnificent dude, at FULL SPEED, guns for the center of the slope, hits the speed bump, SOARS INTO THE NIGHT SKY, wheelchair gleaming in the theater lights, and comes down in a perfect landing, spinning the wheels with his arms to skid-turn and freaking FACE US.
I never ended up hanging out with him again, but holy moly, crippled kid. You are a god amongst men.
42. Davina vs. Goliath
Was at a concert (Lightning Bolt) and had the fortune of being at a show where a good 60% of the floor was a mosh pit. Before we get too far, it's important to note if you've never been in one: there is a code of ethics in a mosh pit. Chief among these is to never take a mosh pit personally. No one is trying to run into you, per se, it's just people cutting loose and roughhousing.
So, we had a jerk who didn't understand this rule; he was about 6'2" and built like a brick house. Any time he got hit, he'd wheel around, find the likely culprit, and give them a too-hard shove. This goes on through the duration of a full song, and everyone around him had grown to notice. Next song comes up and, wouldn't you know it cause he's in a freaking mosh pit, the dude gets shoved again. He turns to attack some kid just trying to have fun, when outta nowhere someone tackles this dude down to the ground. He popped up to see his assailant...
...who was a five foot two woman who must have weighed a buck-ten at most. Clearly had hit him at just the right time where she caught him off guard and knew her stuff well enough to know when to do it. She stepped up to a guy who had a full foot on her and threw her arm backs, as if to say, "What now?" Dude left the pit. I ran up to her and high fived her, "You're the coolest person here by a mile." She smiled, "Thanks!" And shoved me back into the pit.
If she ever runs for president, she's getting my vote; that was the most metal thing I've ever seen.
Sources: ,
_03.JPG){kind=link}
