Hey, if you've got one, lay it on us. You might start sumfin.
I have lots. I never know what will be pulled though. For someone who only believes in science I have had some odd things happen to me. I'll try one that nobody can say could not happen and see what does. This is for Ms. Mod anyway as it relates to her fear of snakes.
In my early teens we swam the watersheds. We swam sand pits that flooded, we swam springfed ponds ice cold in the heat of summer, we swam even in January. Usually it was Jackies Lake which was familiar and whose access door on the intake was unlocked. When the water was up we would "shoot the pipe". That consisted of entering the lakeside door of the intake and climbing down a ladder to a tube under water and drawing heavy. Like a straw being sucked we would ride under water in the concrete tube under the levy to the ejection at the overflow pond on the other side. You had to hold your breath for about a minute before being shot out like a cannon ball. We wore out the seat of some jean shorts doing that. I'm so grateful now that we never ran into a snag of limbs anywhere along the tunnel.
There was another lake we hadn't named or known the name of which we had been in only during winter on a dare. We decided to swim there one July. It was just me and Elliott. It usually was. We swam out to the intake and began climbing to the top and jumping off. Here I will have to explain about watershed intakes. They are about forty yards offshore and poke out of the water as concrete buildings about 15 feet square. Facing the lake they have a door which can be accessed to get to the tunnel which is level with the lake bottom and usually under water. This door was locked and a chainlink fence around the entire front hence our just jumping off the top.
To get up top you had to climb a set of L shaped rungs along the sides which sloped away in a backwards slant. Think of climbing the outside of a \ /. Once past about twenty of those rungs whose inside faced away from you there was a perpendicular grate to hook fingers in and then the concrete top perfectly flat about 20 feet above the water from which to get a running go and jump the 15 feet over the spiked chainlink fence into the lake proper. We had been doing that for over an hour. When you are young you are going to live forever.
We laughed, we talked, we jumped, we climbed, until I hung my head over the side watching him climb the rungs and saw him do a chinup, look inside the L shaped rung then lower himself slowly back into the water and swim like Tarzan to the bank. When he was ashore I shouted why he did that and he said to look in the rungs. I dug my fingers in the grate and leaned out far enough to do so. There were cottonmouth moccasins lined up like links of sausage inside the rungs. Every damn rung all the way to the top. For over an hour our hands and feet had been less than an inch from dark gray skin cool as a corpse lying in shadow. How many times had we climbed? Thirty?
I still had to jump. Did moccasins swim underwater? I racked my brain about that one. I didn't want to jump off the front. The back might be too shallow. I searched the side. The same sides which had given refuge to the snakes. How far could I jump? I had been in the water below them, placed myself next to them without knowing but now it was different. I knew. I paced a bit but in the end it comes down to being stuck there until they start to move or jumping. No helicopter rescue for country boys. I started from the far edge and gave it everything I had. When I hit the water I went down far enough to touch the muck of the bottom. I had to close my mind to what might be and do what must be. I swam to bank without incident. It was the thoughts along the way that were a nightmare. We never swam there again.