I was thinking of one of our more prolific departed (as in: no longer on the board) posters today. She crossed my mind for some reason.
Shortly after she left in late 2012, I set about compiling a record of the colourful life experiences she'd shared with us on the board as a tribute to her. Her comment record was 465 pages long and I decided to process it in batches of 10 pages. I made it through three batches (30 pages, or about 6.5% of the total comment record) before abandoning the project. I think I simply forgot about it.
Flash forward to today. While looking up this poster, I happened on this old project. I'd hoped to resume compiling, but the posts from that era of the board are now all gone and the member's account and posting history no longer exist anyway. Still, what I was able to put together makes for some good reading and reminiscing.
Thus, without further ado I present to you: You Don't Know TOUGH!
Here's to old times and good memories.
don't be like my diabetic friend who had to beg for a banana during an attack, and was refused too
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/41491/threadI once knew an engineer who had a breakdown over the metric system
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/47178/threadI have had people ask for social security #, address, etc. and then leave my application in a big pile, exposed to every Tom, Dick and Harry, and then walk away, leaving this information out.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/59068/threadBut I was nearly killed when a maniac landlord collapsed a ceiling in my apartment to get me out and I came close to dying.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/68757/threadPsychopaths are sane by definition. ... I have run into a few in my time.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/70307/threadI came within 72 hours of dropping dead when my abdominal pain, caused by an ovarian torsion created by a heavy dermoid cyst, was repeatedly treated as a urinary tract infection.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/70859/threadMy brother in law has worked as a CO at many of New York City's prisons for decades and risen to very high rank.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/72949/threadAnemia can also be a sign of internal bleeding. I had the exact same problem due to internal bleeding caused by female problems.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/74777/threadI have had migraines since I was born and I was nearly thirty when they were diagnosed. I have had all three types: Common, Classic and Ocular, although I usually have the Common type.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/74796/threadDo you know that graffiti in my neighborhood killed 3 firemen, sent two to intensive care, injured sixty and rendered scores homeless?
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/79169/threadI had a niece threatened on the internet with being stabbed on Halloween.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/79214/threadI have also spoken to people whose parents beat them so badly that they were kept home from school for a day or two until the bruises and cuts healed. Why, with homeschooling, that can be a daily occurence!
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/105916/threadI actually had a personal run-in with illegals trying to steal my identity. I had someone break into my car a few years ago and run something off the battery. I could tell because the door was left open and the cigarette lighter in the dash was missing.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/117452/threadI have never received one of those grants, but I have suffered through a landlord completely cutting the heat off in the middle of a New York winter. I went through this repeatedly for a couple of years and at one point it landed me in a hospital completely unable to move due to lumbago.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/122402/threadMany years ago, I was (fortunately incorrectly) told that I might possibly have a brain tumor.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/127633/threadI had a friend do much the same to me. When she was flat broke, I would raid my pantry for food for her. One day she stole my breakfast cereal and I was quite peeved, not for the loss of the cereal, but for the several minutes of frustrated searching for it when I craved a dish.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/127849/threadI have had bad reactions to shots, including scarring from an unnecessary smallpox shot required to enter Ireland in 1964 (lots of trips to the doctors and X-rays with that one too). And some involuntary muscle spasms in my arms after I received the pertussis/diptheria booster. Tons of autoimmune problems run in my family, so I am very careful.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/131871/threadI had the honor of knowing the daughter of one of the witnesses to the famed Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. In this wonderful event, young women and children fell to the sidewalks below as flaming embers. They jumped on top of elevators in the shaft and sent it plummeting to earth, while others depended on a flimsy fire-escape that tore lose.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/142092/threadI had one very poorly educated immigrant neighbor dragged into IRS headquarters, sweated, all over a discrepancy of under one dollar and he was made to buy the money order to pay it too. They could not even spring for a receipt.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/142148/threadI have suffered terrible migraines since early childhood and you have not lived until you had someone refuse you an aspirin for lack of parental permission. Many a time I spent sitting right on the floor of the #4 IRT because I had no seat and could not stand. And that was for an hour plus trip.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/142257/threadI have seen adults working in unventilated rooms illegally cutting plates. Said persons lost kidney and liver function. I was invited to do the same, but declined.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/143904/threadWhen my sister was looking for her first apartment, a friend called me and said, "A great apartment just became available. Is your sister superstitious?"
"No" I replied. "Why do you ask?" "Well the last owner just committed suicide and they are wheeling him past my door."
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/143911/threadYeah, and I have a minimally-brain damaged sister and some of you guys would love to shove such people into the Black Marias too.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/144652/threadDon't flash money on a public street for any reason. We've had a few murders that resulted from kind souls taking out their wallets to help the homeless. And it wasn't the homeless who killed them either.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/157455/threadI once was ticketed by a traffic agent as I parked my car next to him and exited to pay the meter. Upon my return within seconds I saw a fresh ticket.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/157464/threadYes, it is outrageous to be ticketed for attempting to flee, but I have had worse happen, including having "no parking signs" put around my car AFTER I had parked and then being ticketed, and having my car ticketed when I exited to pay a meter.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/157508/threadPrescription sunglasses cost the earth. Mine easily cost $500.00 and are worth every penny when one loves the out of doors and has optic nerve issues.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/158738/threadSmallpox is a very dangerous vaccine too. A vaccination I received for an overseas trip to Ireland landed me at the doctor's office repeatedly and in the hospital as well.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/160234/threadGrowing up I always remember my mother's story about the World War I Vet friend of the family who became "shell-shocked" in the war. Every so often, he would have a complete breakdown, ranting and raving about his wife's imaginary lover.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/160282/threadI have had friends who were crippled pursued by nuts who want to know, "What is wrong with you? You look healthy to me."
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/160358/threadHow many Hepatitis vaccines are there anyhow. I know there is one for "C" too. A good friend of mine got quite ill from "A" and I don't know if there is a vaccine for that one, the most common of all.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/160388/threadI have a rare eye disease called pseudo-tumor cerebri that looks just like a brain tumor initially.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/160458/threadNow, I am not kidding when I tell you that I have reported to work in places complete with snarling dogs snapping at me to name a few.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/160507/threadYou should have seen how many of my elite Bronx Science classmates committed suicide the first time they got a bad grade in their ivy-league schools, I kid you not.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/160562/threadThat is how we put an end to the rapist haunting the women's gym in my college. First, he attacked a woman who knew karate and he had to jump through a plate-glass window to escape. Eventually it was men on the wrestling team who took him down permanently.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/160562/threadI have also had friends who found medical care in this country to be so dear that they traveled to India, were cared for there and after adding in travel expenses and lodging, still came out ahead.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/162499/threadBest not to speculate out loud as to what a person might be doing in the bathroom. I once worked with a supervisor who did the same, which made it hard on women who had to use the bathroom more often during certain times of the month for hygenic reasons. One day, he made the mistake of saying something to a very tough German and she told him, loudly, publicly and in obscene detail what she was doing in the bathroom. After the red faded from his face, he never asked again.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/165039/threadExcuse me if you assumed that I was not seen during those 12 hours. I was, and was left to lie in a gurney in the hall without any painkillers. This is unsatisfactory.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/167310/threadSo far as the "cushy" teaching jobs. I once had a friend who switched from working in a welfare office to being a NYC Schoolteacher. He lasted exactly one year because it was tougher than working in a Welfare office. He knew that he had hit a personal low when he threatened to have one child beat up another one for him.
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/167400/thread"My sister had to have her jaw broken and reset as well as bridges and other extensive work due to a genetic illness that made her teeth come in with black tar and widely spaced. This was tens of thousands of dollars in the 1970s which my blue-collar family could not have had done otherwise. Her teeth were so bad that was emaciated in her youth because it hurt to eat."
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/170415/thread"I got caught in a hellstorm and even accused of being demonic when I reminded some on another thread of just how poor conditions are in India."
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/171504/thread"My experience with welfare has primarily been seeing people like my neighbor who returned from a brief illness to see her thousand dollar a week job gone and being offered two hundred a week instead. Another person I knew in this situation was a woman who went on it briefly after her dirty-dog of a husband (who had abused his last wife) disappeared leaving her and her infant daughter about to be evicted from an apartment on which she was unaware that rent had not been paid. Another women I know was dumped on welfare after her own miserable scoundrel took off for California leaving her to raise her two daughters, one of whom had Cerebral Palsy, on her own."
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/172705/thread"This was done to prevent theft, the same reason the doors were locked a century ago at Triangle Shirtwaist. The father of an elderly neighbor was an eyewitness to this catastrophe which cost over one hundred largely teen-aged women and girls their lives."
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/177739/thread"I remember how one vengeful person handled a child molestation in my neighborhood. After the incident, flyers were posted on every lamp-post, telephone pole and tree that featured the offender's face, car and home."
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/180811/thread"A rapist who attacked the sister of my brother's best friend is no longer any threat to our community. When it was learned who did this, the family business was boycotted and within a few months a going concern of decades was shuttered and gone and the pervert with it."
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/180811/thread"It could be worse. I've had people calling me for years about the debts of some shady characters who once lived in my building. At one point, the FBI had an observation post set up in a home across the street to keep an eye out on them."
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/180836/thread"Oddly enough, I have been through 3 small earthquakes, all in New York. There is a small fault near Rampo, in Upstate (right near Indian Point nuclear plant, if you can imagine) and another that runs right down 125th Street in Harlem and directly past my home in Astoria. Until you have been through one, you cannot imagine how truly eerie they are."
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/185183/thread"I had a similar experience. I worked in the now-defunct Bowery Savings Bank for a short period of time. When the machines were down, I bent procedures and let a customer cash a $60.00 check as per the procedures at my former bank where I had been employed for 4 years previously. When the check came back bad, I was canned and the $60.00 was taken from my last paycheck."
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/185637/thread"At one bank that I worked at very briefly in my youth I was robbed by a note-passing bandit. I quickly hit the alarms and he was still waiting and having excellent pictures taken when the management caught on and grabbed him. They actually asked me to re-open, but changed their minds when reminded that I might be a tad distracted after having my life threatened."
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/191697/thread"I had a dear friend who left his bully parapelegic after the boy broke his glasses (said friend is legally blind) and then laughed at the taped up mess the next day. My friend shoved him down a flight of stairs and broke his neck."
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/196848/thread"I once was plagued by a bully who kicked me nearly every day for weeks. When I complained to mom she said, "you can't hit him, you're older." Dad had different ideas and demonstrated how I could grab the boy's foot, pick it up over his head and knock him down. Once I upended him in front of his pals, I never was kicked again."
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/196848/thread"One day, after returning to school with taped up glasses that the bully had previously destroyed, my legally-blind friend shoved his tormentor down the stairs and snapped his spinal cord. My friend was institutionalized for a year or two and was repeatedly abused there."
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/197478/thread"A former fiancee of mine on whom I remained on good terms told me that the woman he dated after me was the former lover of a very crazy man. Some of the things that man did included trying to run my Ex down with a car (he spent a year in jail after running down a stranger instead), going to my Ex's house with a knife and attempting to stab him when he answered the door (my Ex had an icepick that he was using to clean contacts on some vintage electronics when he answered the door, no luck there), finally after he and the woman moved to Connecticut to get away from crazy-man, she foolishly let her son know where she was and father and son trashed the apartment."
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/201755/thread"My niece was cyberstalked by a young lass who threatened to kill her on Halloween when everyone was wearing masks. This was one of a pattern of violence that included bricks tossed through a window, narrowly missing her head and her father blocked from entering his house by the young woman. It finally ended with the maniac and a friend kicking my niece in the head."
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/209573/thread"I have heard of teachers being extorted and threatened after turning in perverts as they are legally required to do to keep their own licenses and livelihoods. I saw a student in the elite high school that I attended toss a throwing star right at the feet of the teacher. Although the teacher brushed it right off, this deadly weapon was sunk right into the floor at his feet."
notmsnmoney.proboards.com/post/215306/thread
~ Friendships Are Warm ~ True Passions are Fire ~ 
Whatever keeps him busy and not paying attention to the rest of us is good. 
