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Honolulu Lite
Charles Memminger
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Weird feats could win you a book!
I was once sitting at a table in a local watering hole when I noticed a friend of mine, a lawyer, standing at the bar about 20 feet away waiting for a drink. For the heck of it, I decided to bounce a peanut off the side of his head. Just to get his attention.
I know, it's a juvenile thing to do, but a lot of bad ideas reach fruition in a place where adult beverages are served. So I picked a little dry-roasted peanut out off the bowl and sent it flying. Now, here's the weird part: It not only hit his head, but actually stuck in his right ear. I had managed to throw a peanut 20 feet through the air and lodge it in a lawyer's ear. Man, what are the odds of that? He kind of grabbed his ear, felt something in there, dug out the peanut and looked at it as if it had come from outer space. You can imagine.
I started thinking of all the amazing and odds-defying things people do every day without even realizing it. I mean, you could sit there and throw peanuts at lawyers all day long and never get one to stick in an ear.
It was just one of many amazingly weird feats I've accomplished in my life. Here are a few others:
» I once threw a football through a basketball hoop TWICE IN A ROW from nearly full court. I doubt even Brett Favre could do that. Well, maybe he could, but I bet the kicker couldn't.
» I used to be good at throwing knives. Not at people, but, you know, in general. I threw a small steak knife across the kitchen and stuck it (on purpose) in a honeydew melon on the counter. That's a tough shot because the melon is round and the knife could have easily bounced off the melon and killed one of my lovebirds. My wife told me never to do it again. And she was right because:
» Once on the Oregon Coast, trying to impress a girl I was dating, I threw a heavy, WWII Army knife at a big rounded piece of driftwood in my yard. The knife bounced off the log, went twirling up through the air right back at us and STUCK, blade first, into the ground between our feet. Thunk! Now, here's the cool part: My date thought THAT was the trick! She was really impressed. Of course, she never knew how close one of us came to having a knife in the chest.
» Playing pool in a bar, I once hit the cue ball so hard it went flying across the room and landed in a pitcher of beer on a table occupied by strangers. They were NOT impressed.
» As a restaurant busboy, I once was clearing dishes from a table really quickly, and a half-eaten baked potato fell right into a man's sports jacket pocket.
The point of these stories is not to brag, but to show that amazing things happen to all of us all the time, things that defy the odds but we just don't notice. They are feats that, if we could do them on demand, would make us all rich.
Here's your chance to at least get something for an amazing feat you've accomplished in your life. E-mail me the tale, and I will give the authors of the best two stories a copy of my book, "Hey, Waiter, There's an Umbrella in My Drink!" And don't try to lie and make up any fake astonishing feats. Really weird accomplishments are stranger than fiction.
Buy Charles Memminger's hilarious new book, "Hey, Waiter, There's An Umbrella In My Drink!" at island book stores or
online at any book retailer. E-mail him at
cmemminger@starbulletin.com