Post a random fact about yourself.

[Carlyle]

I've never had any wisdom teeth pulled. They all came in fine, mainly due to how small they are. My dentist said they were the smallest wisdom teeth he ever saw. Even called in one of the assistants and said the same thing.

[Gunther]

I've lost two wisdom teeth, but only because they broke. I still have two wisdom teeth.

[Dread]

I've had braces longer than I should bc I broke them my freshman year of HS :/

[LeeRoy]

I lost my arm strength at the age of 16 because of torn muscles from helping a "friend" move out of his house. My biceps and triceps on both arms tore, my lateral on my right side tore as well. This crippled my career ideas of professional power-lifter and United States Marine. I later nearly lost my fingers on my left hand due to an incident with glass and permanently damaged the nerves in it. The right hand received nerve damage from a construction injury.

I lost the ability to draw, to lift, to even follow my dreams. Depression struck and I lashed out. This went on for years.

I attempted suicide twice, failed both times. The nerve damage in my hands that caused me to contemplate and inevitably attempt suicide is ironically what prevented me from succeeding. I couldn't cut deep enough through my skin to reach important veins and arteries. Invariably it made me happier and more content with life, knowing that I couldn't hurt myself was somehow comforting.

I came to accept that the world is still beautiful, even without what I had worked hard to achieve. I came to appreciate the little things much more. I still find it weird that, to this day, Tragedy is what made me appreciate Beauty.

[Gunther]

@LeeRoy I am happy to hear that you have somehow realized that life is so much more precious. I hope and pray you find something or someone to keep you on the right path.

I have broken 10 bones in my life.
1. I jumped off a jungle gym in 5th grade and fractured both the tibia and fibula (2)
2. While trying out for the 9th grade football team, I jumped for a pass and fractured my right ankle. (1)
3. One year later while playing basketball, I tried to avoid landing on a friend's foot and twisted the same ankle and fractured it a second time. (1)
4. While in the Infantry Officer Basic Course at Fort Benning, I sustained two stress fractures to one foot from excessive running and walking. (2)
5. While walking on ice, I fell and fractured two ribs. (2)
6. Walking down my drive way to put the trash and recycles out at the curb, I fell and fractured my left wrist. (1)
7. I sustained an additional stress fracture during and around my training in Krav Maga from excessive running, walking, kicking and sparring. (1)

[The Harbinger of Ferocity]

I agree that there is something special to be said for realizing the value of life as @Gunther noted, @LeeRoy. I have had a few brushes with both sides of it, but three in particular stand out.

Of my injuries, the most severe and notable I experienced was in youth, where I had been accidentally poisoned. I was rendered unconscious for a few days and was failing to improve, read becoming worse, and was unreaponsive. However, to my perception and as naive as it was at the time, I had gone on a tour of the cosmos and the infamous "life before one's eyes" type experience. Of all the hallucinations and delusions I have ever experienced, even compared to other near-death encounters, none compared to it. It was both the most fascinating and terrifying experience of my life, to which I recall the only real underlying understanding I had was that this was "the end", whatever that was to mean, but it was not yet the time.

For being no more than the age of six or so years, no more than eight, and one of the few things I still remember at all, I regard it as great support to the idea of near-death experience. The second far, far later instance was similar in that it was a twilight place filled with strange and bizarre sights and ended by a sudden jolt back into the corporeal, as was the third and most recent. Each instance was unique and personal, but all had similar behaviors and themes. In this day I mostly view them as part of what created my understanding of the matter.

Yet oddly I have never broken any bone in my body. I have however, been carved all too many times. At least those heal given they are flesh wounds.

[Gunther]

I spent five years of my life working as a Railroad Conductor in freight service. It was a short line railroad that runs between the Canadian border at St. Albans, VT and New London, CT. One night around 11:30PM I was spotting a car on a customer's track in Brattleboro, VT, near the Connecticut River. I had my engineer cut away from the train, on the main line holding onto 15 cars. We backed onto the customer's track after I removed a steel derailing device. It is on their side of a crossing; route 142. The customer's unloading facility is on a hill. If a car got loose, it would go over the derailing device and stop on dirt rather than crossing the road and strike an automobile. That would be bad.

After tying the boxcar onto a second railcar already on the track, I checked the handbrake on the existing car and felt that was enough to hold both cars in place. I then pulled away from the two empty boxcars. The air dumped on the boxcars, which causes the brakes to set up. I had the engineer stop just beyond the derail. Then I stepped between the rail to put the derail back on. I heard a noise and looked to my right. Here came the car I just set off rolling at me at about 3 or 4 MPH. That might not appear fast, but a steel object weighing 25 tons, it could do serious damage including knuckling me between two cars. That would be fatal. I dove out of the way while yelling an expletive and the car ended up going on the ground after rolling over the derail I replaced.

Apparently, there was a problem with the air reservoir on the rolling car. The air dumped in both reservoirs leveling the brakes and making them not work properly. The pin which would hold the cars together, locking the knuckles in place did not drop. Because I did not put a hand brake on the car, it rolled free. It was scary and I did not get fired as a result.

[Jurassic Weeb]

At one point (when my online home was more or less the X-Evolution Digimon forum), a few online buddies and I tossed around the idea of abridging Digimon Frontier. For IRL reasons on all of our parts, we didn't do it. That said, I would be able to die content if I could help write/voice an abridged series. I say "content" because I could die happy if Sentai or Funimation gave me a shot in an official series.

[Althiel]

I have a fetish for hand-holding.

[Jurassic Weeb]

I have a fetish for hand-holding.

@Althiel

[Carlyle]

I can be stingy with coffee creamer. I'm perfectly fine with black coffee, but damn do I love my creamer.

[Gunther]

I am drinking black coffee.

[Jurassic Weeb]

I cannot drink black coffee. There has to be something to sweeten it for me. Cream, milk, sugar, a few pieces of melted chocolate.

[Lord Orgasmo]

I don't like coffee, so I get my caffeine from photosynthesis and self-loathing.

[Gunther]

I cannot drink black coffee. There has to be something to sweeten it for me. Cream, milk, sugar, a few pieces of melted chocolate.

@Jurassic Weeb

It takes a bit to get used to. Doing whatever you can to eliminate or reduce sugar intake will only help you in the long run. Sugar is probably one of the worst drugs in the American diet.

[The Harbinger of Ferocity]

I prefer my water at relative temperature rather than cold or chilled. Unfortunately this means that if the temperature is particularly warm, the water is as well, and vice versa with the cold. Likewise, I am not fond of ice in the water, or anything else associated with it; just water, as is. No lemon, cucumber, ice, straw, or any of the like.

[Gunther]

I would agree with Harbinger of Ferocity on the temperature of the water. It is irrelevant to me. I prefer no ice in my water. I can however drink the water with lemons, lines or cucumber slices. My current glass has lemons in it, but I can also drink it with nothing in it.

[Dread]

Because I like Mountain Dew "Black Label" so much, and my HS didn't have it, I lobbied the admin office last year and they finally got tired of my bitching added MDBL to the vending machines. I was a hero...for like a week

Although I found out that they are changing the machines before the new school year starts so I might have to lay the hammer of justice down...

[The Harbinger of Ferocity]

I have a strong, almost irrational disdain for puzzles and riddles. Their nature and efforts to be needlessly cryptic irk me and I have yet to experience one that I found to be legitimately clever or interesting. They by and large strike me as an effort to appear more intelligent or erudite than in reality. I never liked needless games and artificial complexity.

[Gunther]

@The Harbinger of Ferocity I have to disagree with you here. I love puzzles and riddles. I see them as something that NEED to be resolved. It is almost OCD for me to solve something. I MUST solve it, regardless of how difficult or simple it may appear. But I have always quested after knowledge; I am a sponge of new information, ideas and concepts. My thirst can never be quenched. The same drive propels me into solving puzzles and riddles. It almost a compulsion. I do have enough discipline to divorce myself when necessary.