A few days ago I noticed something new when I logged into my Gmail account to check my email, bright red text which said…
“Invite a friend to join Gmail”
‘Fantastic’ I thought, and quickly set up a few accounts for friends and family that I had promised invites to for ages. Then I started to think about who I could give the remaining ones to.
I could eBay them, they are going for a bit on eBay and they still seem to be in demand, maybe I could give them out randomly – “Hey you, want Gmail?” – and there’s always Gmail Swap – I’d love a time machine or a trip to the center of the earth – but I didn’t really want any money for them and I’m not sure the time machine would be safe, I’d hate to get stuck in the 1800’s.
I’ve decided to have a bit of a contest. The prize is Gmail invites, full of Gmaily goodness, and I have three invites to give away. To win, all you have to do is tell me a funny story in the comments and I’ll pick three winners in a few days. It can be something that happened to a friend, of a friend, but personal stories are always much more fun.
So go comment, I don’t want to regret passing up that trip to the center of the earth you know.
And the winners are…
Thank you all for the great stories, it was hard to pick only three, but I have. Maybe if I receive some more Gmail invites we can have a round two. Ok, now for the winners stories…
Oz
After a day of double physics, economics and a study period, followed by a debate-team practice (I’m so cool). Needless to say I was pretty beat. This was compounded by the fact that I had been up all the previous night finishing an assignment worth 25% of my course.
The day turned even crappier when, come 6pm I finally got outside school to find I had lost all my money and so couldn’t get the bus home. It’s only a 20minute walk but after 6/7 hours of school stuff and with a bag full of textbooks it took me about 40minutes. I dragged myself through the front door and straight to the living room where I flicked on the telly and flopped on the sofa.
The next thing I know there are loud noises coming from next-door. I think to myself, “For heaven’s sake, why are they having a party now? It’s the middle of the night!”. A few minutes later… more noise. I wake up, upstairs in my bed…”bizarre” I say. I walked over to my window to see what the noise was and watched, bleary eyed as two men bashed-in the back door. “oh.” is my reaction and I just stood there a little confused.
Shouts of, “Oscar? Oscar! Are you okay? Where are you?” came from a voice I did not recognise and so grabbing the nearest sharp implement (a pencil in this case) I headed out onto the landing when much to my amazement two police officers wearing full everything were standing there. One of them took me downstairs whilst the other re-assured my mother that I was okay. The officer asked me loads of questions about who I was and where I went to school and my date of birth and then whether anything was upsetting me. I answered all his questions satisfactorily and they left…. with the back door all broken.
I later pieced together the rest of the story. It turns out I must have fallen asleep on the sofa, managed to walk upstairs and get into bed without waking up. Then 2 hours later (8:30pm not the middle of the night) my Mum arrived home from her meeting, but it turned out she’d left her key in the house. Knocking on the door and ringing the bell elicited no response from me and neither did ringing the phone or shouting through the letterbox. My mum got kinda worried and rang the police, who decided to treat it as if I had committed suicide (hence the asking me if anything was upsetting me). They bashed the door in and lo and behold I was fine.
Best alarm clock, ever, trust me. After telling my friends this story whenever I then tried to go to sleep someone would ring me up and make police siren noises… Not funny after a week or so.
Hexley
Sometime ago I decided that it’s boring to tell people that I work with computers all day long, it doesn’t make for interesting conversation piece, thus I decide to came up with a non-standard response when asked what I do for a living:
Someone: So what do you do for a living?
Me: I paint.
Someone: Wow, that’s so cool. I never met anybody who is an working artist. So what kind of stuff do you paint?
Me: You know that double yellow line in the middle of the road? That’s what I paint. I prevent cars from hitting each other on the roads. I save lives.
Someone: Are you serious? You don’t look like a construction worker at all.
Me: Hey! I prefer to be called a painter, not construction worker!!!
Someone: You must be joking right?
Me: Yeah, I am just a computer programmer.
Dave
My ex-girlfriend. Scary at the time, hilarious now. To saw she was slightly mad would be to insult those sweet 80 year olds who are starting to turn senile.
The reason we broke up? Well, I started to see the light when she starting using a coat hanger to see whether my mother was the person causing the ‘ghostly disturbances’ in the house and then asked me to do it. She then, a couple of days later, told me she was going to have me exorcised due to me being possessed by my mother’s spirit, and my mum was trying to push her down the stairs, drown her in the shower, etc., because she didn’t like her. Whether you believe in this or not, my mother is still alive.
Cut to a month after we break up, I decide I really need to go and have a really, really good night out. Book myself into the beautiful, 5 star Renaissance Chancery Court hotel in London, fabulous room, amazing service, etc etc. Call up two of my good friends and start drinking at approximately 2 in the afternoon. Don’t stop until 3 in the morning. Fell out of the taxi, can’t remember getting into the hotel. What I do remember is that because I was staying on a ‘special’ floor, I had to put my key in the slot in the lift. I kept missing. (Very difficult having good motor skills when very, very drunk). I decide, in a fit of pique, to walk up the stairs instead. Except I walk up too many flights. I walk down. Too many flights. Back up. Too many flights. And down. Again up, again down. Not being able to figure out where my floor is. And so, I get back into the lift.
Seven hours later I wake up in bed. My knee is killing me, and I lower the sheets to discover a fairly sizeable wound. My clothes are hung up, and all the scatter cushions that were spread on my bed are neatly store in a bedside cabinet. Most disturbingly of all, there is a half-empty bottle of body lotion to my right-hand side on the table.
I later discover that I had indeed given up on finding my room and made myself comfortable in the lift and promptly fell asleep. The staff was unsurprisingly, none too happy with this and woke me up after several attempts, taking me to my room, and opened the door using my key. They left me just inside my room, and I got undressed, hanging my clothes up neatly (it transpires I do this in hotels all the time when I’m drunk, most recently at my oldest brother’s wedding), and applied body lotion to the wound on my knee, which was caused by my falling out of the taxi, thinking ‘this will help with the clotting process!’. (Perfectly infallible drunken logic and I’m so pleased I didn’t realise how painful it would have been putting that on a gash.) I am now not welcome at the Renaissance Chancery Court hotel in London.
A few months after we broke up, I get an SMS from her wishing me a happy Christmas. I end one back saying, ‘I thought I said I didn’t ever want to hear from you again’. To which she replies ‘You’re still bitter about us breaking up, all I wanted to do was say something nice!’ Aggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Kitta.net 