JamesB

Hey guys,

I just came up with what I think could be a really interesting series of topics - "The Strangest" series. I'd like to see how this goes ..

So this thread will be a list of what you feel the stranest thing you have physically touched with your own hands (bare or otherwise).

Feel free to post a short list of the (top five maybe?) strangest things you have touched!

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Ustwo

I'm trying to think 'wierd' but all my strangest things are more 'gross' and would kill the thread.

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JamesB

- armed soviet anti-personnel landmine (ie. de-mining operations)
- live, beating heart

I suppose gross can count too actually ...

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maleficent

Seeing as you spend a good part of your day in people's mouths... I'm not sure i want to know what strange things you've touched

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Sage

Hrm....

All kinds of various body parts... Brain, liver, kidney, that sort of thing; we used to go to the pathology section of the lab late at night when we were bored and open up all the jars to see what was inside

Live fish... I know that's not THAT glamourous but there's plenty of people who have never been fishing.

That's about it... the land mine one was cool!

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Ustwo

I feel sorry for those people.

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Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

Elphaba

I held a stingray in my arms and we were face to face. The bottom of the ray was a smooth silky texture that's difficult to describe.

Bill O'Rights

You're an orthofreakin'dontist. What could you possib...um...on second thought...never mind.

Strange is relative. What's strange to you...might not be at all strange to me. With that thought, the most unusual object that I have ever touched would be a nuclear warhead from a Minuteman III missle.

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"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." - Susan B. Anthony

"Hedonism with rules isn't hedonism at all, it's the Republican party." - JumpinJesus

It is indisputable that true beauty lies within...but a nice rack sure doesn't hurt.

Uncle Pony

I once fucked a chick with a hairy ass. Like, hairier than mine.

Touching it was pretty weird.

fresnelly

Thinking it was a only a toy, I once picked up what turned out to be very real dead bat.

Its fur was incredibly soft and the wing skin was so delicate. It was the fine bone structure in the wings that tipped me off.

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Gatorade Frost

Well, I had to use a Mac once. That was pretty weird.

Also I'd have to say live fish. Had to hold a bass a few weeks ago that was probably 8 lb's and it felt like a giant living wat erballoon. Not a big fan.

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I got in a fight one time with a really big guy, and he said, "I'm going to mop the floor with your face." I said, "You'll be sorry." He said, "Oh, yeah? Why?" I said, "Well, you won't be able to get into the corners very well."
Emo Philips

Leto

[QUOTE=Gatorade Frost]Well, I had to use a Mac once. That was pretty weird.

QUOTE]

haha! Me too. It was in BestBuy, and I tried to use the GUI, and got completely lost. Not to mention the wierd action on the mouse.

Strangest thing for me? it would have to be an electric fence (on a farm for holding in cattle) when I was a kid. Shocking experience, especially since I had no idea what the deal was.

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And I never saw someone say that before
You held my hand and we walked home the long way
You were loosening my grip on Bobby Orr

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Jinn

* Arm-toggle for a dummy AMRAAM in an F-16A.

During the "Millionaire Magazine Race Across America" where I provided security:
* Eleanor (one of two) from Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000)
* General Lee (one of 60ish, if I remember correctly

* My own kneecap after I took a particularly nasty spill on a bicycle.
(It was way more spongy than I expected)

*My own upper brow (eye orbital) after taking tumbling down a mountain.
(Whiter than I expected -- the bone looked bright white - I always expected bones to be grayer)

* The gearshift of a Lamborghini Diablo (previously owned by Mario Andretti) that happened to stop at a gas station I was in.

* An electric stove coil, set on "High" -- ended up with first/second degree burns on my entire left hand.

Can't really think of anything else - I guess I went more with 'unique' than 'strange', though..

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Ample

Okay maybe a little sappy, but my first daughter seconds after birth. So little So light So much of me. I was feeling a wide range of emotions, strange being one of them.

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Her juju beads are so nice
She kissed my third cousin twice
Im the king of pomona

Daniel_

Handfulls of liquid mercury - I was a kid and didn't realise how toxic it was. It feels weird.

Uranium metal while I was at university - it was DU, but even so I was freaked out.

And as said above - my own offspring. So much EVERYTHING.

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Overhead, the Albatross hangs motionless upon the air,
And deep beneath the rolling waves,
In labyrinths of Coral Caves,
The Echo of a distant time
Comes willowing across the sand;
And everthing is Green and Submarine
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The_Jazz

* hot, liquid poo shooting out of my son's butt while his mother held him up. It was more of a reflex action than anything else, but there's really nothing like cupping your hands to hold someone else's shit, even if it is your own offspring's.

* Haile Gebresalassie's hand after he lost his first international competition in 7 or 8 years. He was the world record holder in every track event from the 3k to the 20k at the time. He's got a very strong grip, especially since he's only about 5'3" or so.

* A check made out to me personally for over $1M. I was at a renewal meeting for a client, and they mistakenly made out the check to me instead of my company. I had to make them correct their mistake, but it was neat to see.

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"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
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Smooth23

I'd have to say the first time I field dressed a deer it was pretty strange feeling. The slimey, warm guts just felt very wierd knowing they were part of a living beast just minutes prior.

Pip

Most amazing: Her. She made my knees go weak, my mouth go dry... I love her, I want her.
Most yucky: Cow's eye, pig's heart and lungs, sundry rat intestines.
Most cold: Dry ice with bare hands. Used lots of it for a mad scientist's lab in a play and it was a lot easier to handle the small pieces without gloves.

Also a Class IVb laser, a Mach 3 windtunnel, and a tarantula and a big-ass snake at the petting zoo.

And the church where the mural that inspired Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal is.

Daniel_

All at the same time? What are you, a Bond Villain?

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╔═════════════════════════════════════════╗
Overhead, the Albatross hangs motionless upon the air,
And deep beneath the rolling waves,
In labyrinths of Coral Caves,
The Echo of a distant time
Comes willowing across the sand;
And everthing is Green and Submarine
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Sage

^ lol

that ship is NICE!

I think that some of these answers deserve explanation.. like...

- what's the deal with the awesome ship?

- the competitive runner guy... why were you there? why his hand?

- the electric stove coil.. didn't you learn anything as a kid?

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noodle

Paul Newman's arm.

A friend's eyeball.

I used to work with snakes, so I held numerous ones at a time. People thought I was strange.

A mouse vomited up by a snake. That was strangely not gross, but odd. Still whole, just dead and compacted.

A trachostomy tube.

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Charlatan

paddyjoe....

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The_Jazz

He's been a hero of mine since I was in college. We're about the same age, and the first year that I really did anything on the college scene, he made set a world juniors record. The year that I reset my college 5k school record, he set the world record (there was about a 2 minute difference in the times, btw).

I made a special trip to this track meet to see Haile run since it was going to be a good one, and the Ethiopians were making a big appearance. One of my buddies was a shoe rep at the time and got us to the equivalent of backstage after the race and introduced me to Haile's manager who introduced us to Haile. For a guy that pretty much had his world drastically change 30 minutes before, he was remarkably gracious, kind and personable. I am supposed to call him if I ever go to Ethiopia. Pretty cool.

__________________
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

Zeraph

Nice idea for a thread.

*Probably my oddest: fossilized dinosaur poop...no kidding, I still have it somewhere actually.
*"Oldest object you'll ever touch" -my professor when we got to touch some meteorites.
*Got to hold/play with two baby albino tigers.
*Various brains/eyes/body parts from animals (got to hold a human brain too, but not actually touch, it was in a jar).
*Some statue from ancient egypt found in some famous tomb.

That's my top 5, up until now I hadn't realized I had touched some pretty cool stuff.

spindles

* An echidna in the wild
* a small python at a zoo in North Qld (not at all like I expected it to feel - not slimy at all)
* frogs (definitely are slimy feeling)
* I third the tiny baby straight after birth

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streak_56

I've done that too... really unique... but I think touching a Jelly Fish to me, was definately the strangest.

healer

It's really sad that I can't think of anything off-hand...

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Pip

I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you. Nah, it was separate incidents. The laser was during a laboration with a much less impressive windtunnel, only ~70 m/s I think. The animals were in a zoo with no giant lasers or extreme windtunnels at all. Which is probably a good policy for zoos.

The ship is a copy of the Swedish East India Trading Company ship "Götheborg", built in Gothenburg and currently in Shanghai. She visited Stockholm before she sailed away across the globe and I got to go onboard her and pat her cannons. It was absolutely awesome. She even smelled wonderful.

The_Jazz

I love this thread. I really and truely do.

You reminded me that I've touched the skull of a T. Rex. And it wasn't just any T. Rex but Sue's at the Field Museum here in Chicago. Add to that the fact that I was hammered at the time and that there's a picture one of my friends has of me with my head in the mouth, and it was a pretty damn good time.

Other things from the Field - dodo (dead), flesh-eating beetle (alive), fossil of a 700 or 800 million year old snail (thrown at my head by the head of the department) and many many beer cans.

A very good friend of mine from college worked there for a while, and workers have a happy hour every Friday in one of the 3rd floor classrooms. We used to go all the time and I still have a bunch of friends that work there.

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"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

Zyr

I'll go with the smart arse answer: Myself.

I can't think of anything really. I was going to hold a tarantula once, but it wouldn't cooperate.

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Omnia mutantu, nos et mutamur in illis.
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little_tippler

On a sad note...

in terms of touch the strangest experience I have had was to kiss and touch a dead relative's forehead.

On a lighter note...

the lens from a dissected sheep's eye

having my finger stuck in half an orange (long story...kids' practical joke)

that's it, off the top of my head.

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Whether we write or speak or do but look
We are ever unapparent. What we are
Cannot be transfused into word or book.
Our soul from us is infinitely far.
However much we give our thoughts the will
To be our soul and gesture it abroad,
Our hearts are incommunicable still.
In what we show ourselves we are ignored.
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming.
Unto our very selves we are abridged
When we would utter to our thought our being.
We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams,
And each to each other dreams of others' dreams.

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warrrreagl

George Wallace's hand

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Sultana

A baby shark's kidneys--ok, I've had my hands inside all manner of deceased land and sea creatures. But the kidneys of a shark are so big in relation to the rest of it's body, and way bigger than human kidneys (in scale, of course). So that made the biggest impression.

Trying to think of any thing else, I am reminded of the time my sister stuck her finger up my beagle's bum--not planned! The look on her face--and the beagle's face, for that matter, was priceless!! One of the funniest moments of my life.

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stevie667

Not really so much what i have touched, but what has touched me.

An old 'party trick' at a former job was to put my hand in one of the tanks full of shrimp and let them climb up my arm (to the waterline) and give a good exfoliation session by eating all the dead skin cells. Either that or the time i would play with the armoured fan shrimp by sticking my little finger in front of their fans. They seemed to get the joke, which was cool, because they're big bastards.



Other than that, the strangest thing i have touched was the colour purple. Mind you i was pretty fucked at the time.

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splck

hmmm, things I've touched...
A shark while scuba diving (felt like sand paper).
A 50lb ingot of gold.
The warm, football sized, heart of a moose.

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nice line eh?

Gabbyness

LMAO! Well said

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stevie667

"we dispensed with the laser sharks, instead we're developing hurricane resistant laser spiders and snakes"

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rmarshall

A cat's tongue is pretty strange.

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Daniel_

Although it's not me, I have just remembered that BOTH of my wives have been troden on (at different times) by Stirling Moss the racing driver.

That's a pretty weird coincidence.

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╔═════════════════════════════════════════╗
Overhead, the Albatross hangs motionless upon the air,
And deep beneath the rolling waves,
In labyrinths of Coral Caves,
The Echo of a distant time
Comes willowing across the sand;
And everthing is Green and Submarine
╚═════════════════════════════════════════╝

ASU2003

Even though they are pretty common and some of you can touch one anytime you like. The strangest thing I have touched was a vagina.

In 26 years I've only touched one, and the events leading up to it were just as strange (and no alcohol was involved).