In the drinking game called “I Never,” the players sit around in a circle with big mugs of beer. One person reveals something that he/she never did, and the people in the circle who did do that activity are forced to have a drink. The game usually starts off with tame events and progresses to multi-party, atheletic sexual events. It’s best played when you know the other players well and can say things like, “I never had sex with my cousin’s boyfriend.” And then the guilty party takes a red faced drink and everyone laughs. (God, I’m so glad to not be 21 any more.)
Since we’re on the topic of booze, let’s change this drinking game around. Please tell the blogosphere one cool thing that you’ve done that you suspect that nobody else has done. And I don’t want to hear about athletic sexual events, because it’s impossible to shock me. I told one story in the comments section yesterday. Your turn.
Apt. 11d 
Dressed up as the Pope for Halloween
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My parents used to be archeologists and I was on a site with them when they unearthed Native American burial grounds.
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Aw, this skews toward the older and the more adventurous. Is that fair?
Been in plane crash.
Been in bus crash (roll-down-a-mountain bus crash).
Been bit by rabid dog.
Had tapeworms.
Been deported.
Been shot at, twice (hit, never).
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In the early 90’s I dressed up in a Priest suit/collar so I could get special treatment on national flights and no one would suspect I had weed and ecstasy.
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Most of mine come as a result of a cool job (was Washington correspondent for the Jerusalem Post)
Been in the Oval Office with a U.S. president and asked him a question (Bush 1 when the Israeli Prime Minister was visiting, I was with a bunch of other reporters, have a photo to prove it.)
Shook hands with King Hussein of Jordan in his palace.
Was kicked out of a press conference by Syrian govt. security (when they found out I was representing an Israeli paper)
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Let’s see, per Harry’s instructions, and non-anonymous…
I’m rather certain I’m one of only two people (the other being my ex-husband) who sustained a high impact collision with a black angus cow, in the middle of the night, on the way to Burning Man. …the car survived with minimal damage (still got us the rest of the way there, and all the way back to Washington), I survived with several broken ribs…the cow had small issues with the semi with a cow guard coming along the other side of the road.
…and now I know why cow guards are on semis that go through Nevada.
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Was attacked by a blackbird in the “old port” area of Montreal.
Bought a case of C.Howard’s violet candies from Amazon.
Dressed as Matthew Lesko for Halloween.
Sat in a chair that Jiang Zemin had sat in the previous day, in the Lithuanian president’s residence.
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I’ve eaten warthog, crocodile, and hippo (delicious). Also Sea Cucumber (most disgusting thing I’ve ever put in my mouth).
I’ve been detained on suspicion of being an assassin.
I’ve been teargassed.
I’ve been pissed on by a monkey.
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I had a beer with a fire eater at Coney Island.
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Well, I’ve had a varied life.
Met the (current) Prime Minister of Denmark
Butchered and eaten: rabbits, cows, pigs, deer, groundhog, and beaver.
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The thing I like to say during the “I have never” game is that I’ve never gone an entire night without sleeping.
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Argued in the U.S. Supreme Court while wearing orange underwear
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Y’know, there’s a reason why this is a drinking game. Sober and in the light of day– much less in front of god, google, and every future student who knows how to use the latter– there’s just a limit to the stories that will be told. Two came to mind immediately and were discarded almost as fast.
But I’ll own up to: gotten into an argument with Richard Gephardt about national service that used the concept “opportunity cost”… as a 16-year old.
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Oooooh. Fun answers.
Like the pope costume, Jane. I have no good adventures with dress up myself, but I dated a guy who was endlessly amused by dressing up in odd places. He hiked down the Grand Canyon dressed as a Hasidic Jew. His beard and curls were drenched in sweat.
Meg, life should always skew to the older and more adventurous. Are you able to get life insurance with that history?
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Y’know, there’s a reason why this is a drinking game. Sober and in the light of day– much less in front of god, google, and every future student who knows how to use the latter– there’s just a limit to the stories that will be told. Two came to mind immediately and were discarded almost as fast.
killjoy. 🙂
I know. I’ve regretted nearly everything that I’ve written this week. I wrote that post that made references to body shots, took my kid to school, ran home to delete it, and found that Dan had linked to it. [Big smirk.]
Now, I really want to know about those two stories. At APSA, I’ll buy you a beer.
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Finished a book compiling hundreds of alternatives to fossil fuels available now at prices comparable to what you pay for them. The obect was to figure out how much of current fossil fuel use the USA could replace at no additional cost. To my surprise, the answer was “all of them”. Don’t think anyone else has added up those numbers and come up with that answer. (Yeah I know RMI – but they assume all sorts of breakthroughs.) So, seems cool to me!
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I’m acutally hoping I’m not the only one on this one.
A girl asked me to light my public hair on fire with a candle lighter and I did.
Burns fast.
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Rode a horse in mongolia until my ass blead from the bouncing on the primitive saddle.
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Got a court order on election day to vote for Denny Kucinich in the Democratic primary in 2004. My registration card was “lost” by the Dean people with whom I had registered months before.
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Insurance? No problem — nowadays I just sit on my ass like the old fart I am. All my good stories are from my 20s… I don’t think I’ve notched a single I Did since I turned 30.
(I had totally forgotten about costume adventures, despite Jane’s excellent example… I did spend Halloween night in the drunk tank dressed as a Clairol Herbal Essence bottle — for violating the open-container law and having no ID on me.)
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Err, been tracked across State lines by the FBI on suspicion of armed robbery? Been deported (well, sorta, advised to withdraw my application to enter), umm, bribed a North Korean agent (inside their Moscow Embassy) with $10,000 in cash? Had same agent and two N. Korean Generals threaten to kill me? Bought two truckloads of coins and melted them down for the metal? Smuggled all sorts of metals?
The one (perhaps the only one I’m proud of) I’m proudest of: delivering the newspapers to The Queen of England one day.
Blame Harry at CT for this.
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I got the German government to pay for a trip back to the United States so I could pick up my cat. (I bet nobody else has done that.)
I had a friend nicknamed Satan. And then, fifteen years later, I had a second friend nicknamed Satan.
I have lived in two cities hit by terrorist attacks. (DC 2001, London 2005).
I did the opposite of driving drunk really fast: driving stoned really, really slow. (But I seriously doubt I’m unique on that point.)
I sent polite but strongly worded letters to the editor of the Washington Post that were never published. 🙂
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OK, I’ve thought of something. Beaten up by Metropolitan Police (London) during the great miners strike of 1984-5, then (much more brutally, but also, oddly, more politely) by the LAPD during the Century City Janitors’ strike of 1991 (hence inadvertant appearance in Bread and Roses). Nothing like as impressive as tim worstall, I must say!
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Rode in an elevator (at the same time) with 2 men who walked on the moon and the first US woman in space.
Talked football while in the beer line at the Astrodome with the last person to walk on the moon.
Been offered access to the US President to use him as a job reference.
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I did laundry in a bathtub for two years (frequently freeze- drying the clothes outside on a balcony), I accidentally got on a crew bus and wound up at a coal mine, I was suspected of being a US spy, I provided English conversation practice to a Russian Army major in intelligence, and I was propositioned by a Russian foot fetishist.
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I flamed Caitlin Flanagan so badly that she responded — in the Atlantic no less — that I was attempting to “make her feel bad”. This is probably the greatest achievement of my adult life. (I cancelled my Atlantic subscription not long after.)
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Deported El Duque.
Well, me and 13 other crewmembers of a Coast Guard cutter.
But I guarantee you no one ELSE has done that. (I came here from Crooked Timber, it’s my first visit.)
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I had Thanksgiving dinner at Spiro Agnew’s house in Maryland the year after he resigned the vice-presidency. (His daughter was a college buddy.)
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oh, and, talked my way into the windowless, cockroach-infested two-dollar hotel room of a gorgeous 6-foot-tall Swedish lesbian (“my name is Lilla and some people call me Lilla Godzilla but I hate it”) who was visiting San Juan at the same time I was, even though I knew nothing was going to happen.
This is fun.
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I was near a town called Hampi in South India, in the state of Karnataka. I was wandering along the shore of a lake when I came across human remains, a skull, backbone and a few ribs to be specific. I’m not sure how old they were but there were still bits of brain inside the skull. It seemed wrong that the remains were just lying there but I left them alone. When I got back to the place where I was staying (a grass hut in a farmer’s field), I told the owner about it and he warned me not to tell the police since they’d just try to pin it on me (apparently Indian police are really lazy and are more concerned with finding a patsy than the real culprit). So the next day, I went back to the remains, built a funeral pyre, and cremated them.
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Walked into a high school class in which I wasn’t enrolled, opened a lawn chair next to a friend’s desk and popped a soda.
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I was accused (here) of being Caitlin Flanagan or one of her minions. I wish!
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Laughed out loud at the Matthew Lesko impersonation and the Caitlin Flanagan flame!
Upon the challenge, I immediately thought of the unique-by-definition stuff like “was born to such-and-so at this time on that day at such-and-such a location.” But that wouldn’t be sporting. At least one of these should be unique:
I got an essay published in the sadly defunct IntellectualCapital.com (when I was a teen).
I got booed by approximately 20,000 people while performing at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall.
And I’ve used stuff I learned from stand-up and from reading Neal Stephenson to get a job.
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Had lunch with Avedon Carol (from The Sideshow) and Samuel Delany just last Sunday. Since the only other person there was my husband….
MKK
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Mowed the lawn.
Of a cemetery.
Using only a scythe.
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Decrypted encrypted secret censorware blacklists, and passed the information on to journalists, being a bona-fide Anonymous Source for an expose (it’s public now, done in 1995, my Deep Throat role came out in 2000/2001).
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Spent 22 months in South Korea knocking on doors trying to introduce interested people to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Also, on my last day in the country, I snuck out of my hotel, took a cab to the middle of the city, looked both ways, hopped over a fence, dodged a guard, clambered up a 400-year-old preserved stone tower, and hung out watching the traffic far below for about an hour, thereby grossly violating the National Antiquities Act, for which I could have been fined, locked up, and possibly gotten my church kicked out of the country. I will deny this upon interrogation.
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I was mayor of my local borough while in high school.
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I usually lurk but I can’t resist this one. I talked my way into the NYC headquarters of Aum Supreme Truth after they gassed the Tokyo subway. I said I was interested in private yoga lessons.
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Been run over by a stage-coach — this was in the reconstructed ghost town of Columbia, in the Sierra Nevada foothills. It ran over and broke my little toe (left foot), when I was about 14 years old. Man was that ever painful.
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I ate fire fifty times in a night while pursuing a student government position at Harvard. (I won.)
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I pied Thomas Friedman!
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Sang (as an impromptu a capella duet) “Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah” to Mother Theresa in the baggage claim area of Hanoi airport.
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Watched “Speed” on a bus.
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Well now I feel guilty for linking, Laura, so let’s see what I can come up with to make it up to you.
I have:
a) Spent the night on the floor of a bus in Kazakhstan;
b) Presented a paper at a serious academic conference while sipping on a big-ass Hawaiian drink (the conference was in Honolulu);
c) Forged a visa to get into Ukraine.
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I saw Charles de Gaulle at Dulles Airport when he left after a state visit. I had a fox hole in my front yard that I and my family and neighbors had to go into when the nuclear attack air raid siren sounded when we lived in Japan in the ’50s.
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Had my romantic novel turned down by Mills & Boon.
Been offered a job as a librarian with MI5.
Translated Latin while breastfeeding.
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I pissed myself in a cop car while on acid. Prolifically: it pretty much flooded the backseat, and even dripped on the cop’s shoes when he opened the door to pull me out at the station.
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Dan Drezner’s third is great. But have you ever forged one to get out of Russia?
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Don’t be guilty, Dan. My first instincts are always exhibitionist, like every blogger. But then, you know, that professorial decorum thing starts nagging me and I start to worry that I shouldn’t tell future students and search committees that I slam danced in CBGBs or jumped on the subway tracks on a dare. oops. did it again.
My comment-adverse husband wanted to contribute to the in-a-foreign-country-with-out-proper-papers stories. He was student teaching in Germany and after getting hammered at Oktoberfest, suddenly decided he wanted breakfast in Italy. So, he jumped on a train going South without his passport. When he passed out in his compartment, someone swiped his Eurorail pass. After the train entered Italy, he was booted off the train for not having his passport. He jumped back on the moving train, was caught by police, dumped in Austria, and talked his way back to Germany. And he had the worst mullet at the time. It was the 80s.
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I hitchiked from Oregon to Minnesota and back in the middle of winter.
I was interviewed by the FBI while changing my son’s diaper.
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Another without papers tale: bribed a Mexican official to overlook my lack of tourist card. (Ok, like who hasn’t bribed a Mexican official).
Led a sing-along of “Doe a Deer” with a roomful of Chinese students (they knew the words better than I did).
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I advised Donald Rumsfeld on the fat content of a roast beef sandwich.
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Got George Harrison’s autograph at a Delaney & Bonnie and friends gig in Liverpool where he had turned up to play along.
Shared a sleeping compartment on an Indian Railways train from Bikaner to Delhi with an entire under-14 girls handball team from Uttar Pradesh.
Stopped the British folk singer Martin Carthy in his tracks by asking for “Your Baby ‘as Gone Down the Plug’ole” when he asked for requests.
Requested a year’s worth of Mayfair magazine from the archives of the National Library of Scotland.
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Set fire to the bed while making love.
Man, that was a long, long time ago.
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Got collected from the People’s Palace (Salvation Army hotel) in a chauffeur-driven Rolls (at age 14, so a very long time ago).
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Drove from Lisbon Portugal to Kabul Afghanistan in a VW Beetle.
Visited the set of Petticoat Junction and got to go on the train, which was plastic.
Got hepetitis in FEZ Morocco and spent 6 weeks in hospital there speaking neither Arabic or French and had to be rescued by the American Embassy.
Got stuck in a snowstorm in Rocky Mt National Park and had to be rescued by the Rescue Unit with a helicopter.
Got stuck on Anacapa, Channel Islands, during a storm and had to sleep in the 1 room Museum with a couple on their honeymoon, with no food for several days.
Got arrested protesting the Seabrook Nuclear Power Station in New Hampster
Ran sailboat races in Rockport MA
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Got hammered and slammed John Ashcroft to his face (before he was the Attorney General).
Head judge (and virgin) at a university fake orgasm contest attended by 2,000 people.
Lived with a teenage dominatrix who worked in the sex industry to put herself through NYU.
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Dated a Bush (close relative of the president, though back then he was a close relative of a different president) which lots of people have presumably done, but nobody in my circles, real life or online.
Ran from the Nepali police when they turned their guns on stone-throwing protesters and hid in a courtyard of an apartment building with a bunch of Nepalis who didn’t speak English and a tall, blond Danish guy I’d never met before who did.
The next day took an overnight bus to Calcutta with an entire family in the seat next to me, the baby in my lap, and the baby’s mom leaning over me to throw up out the window.
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Witnessed a murder.
No, I didn’t know it was happening at the time. Late at night, two guys apparently fighting – what I didn’t realise was that one of them had a knife and what appeared to be a medium level stoush was actually a stabbing.
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The Things People Do
My pal Laura had a great idea for a blog post — she initiated an online version of the drinking game “I Never” and asked people to post and tell the blogosphere one cool thing that you’ve done that they…
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A long time ago, I filled in the “returning residents” questionnaire on a translatlantic airplane listing my Occupation as Spy.
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Taken a dump where the Ramones song “Chinese Rocks” was written.
Ate a snake heart (it was still beating as it went down) outside of Hanoi.
Got into a brawl with Skinheads in Poland.
Good times.
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Saved Newt Ginrich from having his head staved in by a Tandy 1000 dropped from a second floor balcony.
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Oh yeah, I’ve witnessed a shooting (presumably a gang-related one, when I lived in LA, right outside my apartment window), and a presumed kidnapping (that’s what it looked like, in Soho, London). And, oddly enough, given my profession (philosopher who thinks about drowning children), saved a drowning child when i was 3 (he was 2, and I saw him lying face down in a swimming pool ealry in the morning, into which he’d fallen from his bedroom window, and raised the alarm — apparently he was fine). Bets think I’ve ever done, but no-one deserves any credit for what they did as a 3 year old, unfortunately.
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I was baptised as a baby. That wouldn’t be so unusual, except that my family are Orthodox Jewish. Long story.
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Spent several days hanging out & driving around with a gang member in South Central L.A./Watts for a story I was working on
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I petted a bat that was sitting on the ground and had to have rabies shots. At the age of 26.
I was publicly (and rather angrily) accused of being an adult midget and not a real child at the age of 8 when my student-mother took me to her college english class and I correctly answered a question about the book My Antonia when none of the college kids knew the answer (I’d read it the year before :). The professor then berated the class and the class, well, berated me.
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While home sick, I got a call from Dr. Ruth Westheimer (the sex guru), wishing me a lifetime of great sex. At first, I thought it was a joke! But it was for real.
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Went to school with Natalie Portman and let her use the computer I was using.
Went to school with Benjamin Salisbury (Brighton on the Nanny) and called him a spoiled little rich kid.
Started a non-profit at the age of 15, receiving international press.
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Flipped a double cab Ford F-350 on a dirt road in Utah. Neither I nor the 6 passengers were hurt. Thanks for asking.
Got into an absolute screaming match (raised voices, shaking fists) with a college interviewer over whether the Anasazi were related to the Aztec (they’re not particularly). I was already predisposed to hate the guy because the interview was in the house that my dad grew up in and every time we drove buy it my dad would complain about how this guy was “letting it go to hell.” Although I won the argument on facts (not that the interviewer recognized that) I didn’t get in.
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Taught Kimba Wood how to brake on roller-blades. (We were in the same rollerblading for beginners class in 1995).
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Translated the first story of Sandra Cisneros’s Woman Hollering Creek into Latin
Missed a chance to see Ayman Nour’s flat so I could read al-Yaquoubi
Buried a pair of socks in the Sahara
Gotten a personalized license plate named after a King of Shu
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In 1994, slept (fitfully) in a room in a safe house in Saddam Hussein’s northern Iraq with an AK-47-wielding Kurd outside the door for protection.
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I got caught by Israeli security taking a picture of a toilet in the Israeli airport. Try explaining to two angry security offices why on earth you would take a picture of a toilet. (the answer= it was different than the ones back home)
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I got lost in the drakensberg mountains in 2000 with 12 other girls. We had to be airlifted out.
got pelted with mielies (maize cobs, for the non-South Africans) in Alexandra township in 2004
got drunk with the head of my department in a pub called the “Mystic boer”. Ok, I didn’t get drunk, but she did, and remembered very little the next morning.
Dislocated my knee by sitting on the toilet.
Discussed a paper I had presented at a conference the day before with a room full of naked Scandinavians
Sang for Nelson Mandela.
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An escalator at Oxford Circus tube station ate my dress. Unfortunately for me it was the dress I had been wearing until it got caught and ripped off leaving me in stockings and purple knickers, and with a long journey home ahead of me.
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I tried to bribe my way into an exclusive disco in Budapest on New Year’s Eve 1988, when my friends and I found ourselves with an extra $200 – a lot of cash in 1988 Hungary – that we couldn’t convert out of Hungarian currency. Our attempts at bribery failed, but we amused the bouncer enough that he let us in anyway. We bought champagne for the whole place at midnight.
Much later, I settled a multi-million dollar lawsuit on the phone while pouring apple juice for my sick 3-year-old.
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While exchange students in southern France, some friends and I got chased by a gang of young French hooligans, because one of my friends was too drunk to have the good sense not to talk to them. We had to hide in the bushes while they roared by on their…um…mopeds. Yup, I’ve been chased by a moped gang.
When we lived in New York City, I witnessed a murder that made the front page of the Metro section of the Times. I even testified at the trial.
I drank beer at the same table with Karenna Gore and didn’t realize who she was (apparently we had some mutual friends in college).
I’ve done vodka shots with Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s youngest son (who is a bit eccentric, but a nice guy (the son)).
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Dressed as a blogger at a costume party.
Ate at least one species from each of the five classes of vertebrates on Eat An Animal For PETA Day, the annual observance founded by Meryl Yourish.
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I also saw “Speed” on a bus. On a school trip no less.
And I married a Fire-Eater.
Had 45 minutes of straight juggling at my wedding, and not all the guests who wanted to juggle got a chance.
And… gave my dog his own blog. http://giveadogablog.blogspot.com
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I was in a SUV rollover accident and went to the ER afterwards on my prom night.
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I was in a SUV rollover accident and went to the ER afterwards on my prom night.
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Dressed up as the Ayatollah Khomeini for Halloween, 1980.
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Liverpool Flights
Liverpool is at the western end of the M62 motorway. Liverpool Transport G
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Well really nice website,I find here many interesting information 🙂
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Taught the Hokey Pokey to a group of Russian illegal aliens who were working as night janitors at the local Wal-Mart so they could learn the English names for body parts
Spent all night on Mt. Washington alone in the woods w/o appropriate gear because I was too afraid of heights to make appropriate time on the trail, and coped by singing every chorus I could remember from Sunday School at the top of my lungs, no doubt ensuring that all wildlife stayed far away.
Hitchhiked to Munich at age 16 with 2 German friends
Learned at age 8 that there was no Santa Claus by reading my mother’s copy of Dr. Spock
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Codeine.
Cheap codeine. Apap w codeine elx. Pseudoephedrine with codeine cough syrup.
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