Willravel

I was reading the Cracked article regarding badass presidents today when I realized that we're all badasses in some way. So I want you to write a brief autobiographical article about how you're a fucking badass.

I'll start.

Apparently I had beaten god in a bare-knuckle boxing match before being born, because he was so butt hurt that he arranged for me to be born without an aorta—the largest artery in the human body—and a deformed bicuspid valve (which was supposed to be tricuspid). Just to spite him, I lived without it until I was about 5, when I decided that a little plastic in my chest wouldn't stop me from fucking the prom queen.

While my aorta meant that I couldn't be on the football team in high school according to a world renowned cardiac specialist , I tried out and made first string anyway just because I decided it might be fun to see just how strong that piece of plastic in my chest was. To give this situation some perspective, Arnold Schwarzenegger just had a bad valve and a perfectly fine aorta, but he stopped playing football at 14 because it was too high impact. My cardiologist found out and called my coach. I had a three way call with them and convinced my cardiologist that as a kicker, I'd be perfectly safe.

Oh, did I also mention that I've broken several bones, none of them mine? Yeah, while I was defying medical science on the football field, I was doing it again by learning martial arts. From UFC legend Ken Shamrock's adopted father Bob Shamrock.

Greatest display of badassery:
This would be a tie between dying for 45 seconds and being hit by a Hyundai Tiburon going 35 mph. The first happened during the installation of the plastic, where I presumably mocked god, and the second happened as I was going to get some Taco Bell. I was walking from my car and got hit. Then I got up and yelled at the guy. Still, those were some delicious tacos.

Most badass quote:
"Relax, have some dip" said by me to a kid I just popped in the jaw at a party when I was 15.

Shauk

I knew he'd be ok, it's just a flesh wound.



my car, fyi

Willravel

Oh man, you should have seen the poor car. Is the hood plastic? It felt like someone threw a giant plastic binder at me.

ngdawg

I, too kicked ass before being born. Back in those dark ages, there was no ultrasound, no prenatal testing or any of those conveniences. As mom was in labor, her water broke and meconium was seen. This is a sure sign of imminent danger as meconium is an infants first official dump and it being done before birth could mean Meconium Aspiration-death by shit. As she was being prepped and nurses quietly panicked, it was further revealed that I was breach. "Oops, she's dead", they figured. Wrong!! Came out ass first, legs up over my ears (which earned me a nickname because I spent the next year with one leg always up in the air), but perfectly healthy.
Yea, this kid was badassed in more ways than one...

Fast forward about 19 years, this ass-backwards girl is now working in a convenience store. It's Sunday night, close to closing and two guys walk in, ask for a pack of cigs from the case behind me. As I turned, a knife is poked into my back with those cliched words, "This is a stick-up." (No, ,really, they said that!) I dropped the cigs, said "Oh, shit!" and they took me into the back. One held the knife on me as the other cleaned out the cash register. Mr. Clean came back, wondered aloud what to do with me, because I "might scream." "I ain't gonna scream," I replied. "Just take what you came for and get the hell out." Oh, yea, badass crime victim. Until they left, then I was a shaking, stuttering baby on the phone to the police, giving the robbers' description as "short, blonde, good looking and the other big blonde and goofy looking." Two laughing cops came in. "Goofy looking???" BUt they concurred, I was badass. I didn't get dead.

Badass quote: "That's not desperation, that's arrogance." Said to my boss when he tried to explain why I was still on the schedule after I'd asked to be taken off. Funny, I was never called back in to work....

Willravel

YEAH! Someone buy that young lady a beer!

Awesome, NG.

jewels

I refused to smile at my mother from when I was a baby and punched the tallest boy in 1st grade in the nose because there was a booger hanging out and I guess I thought that was easier then telling him.

I gave my blind, middle school English teacher the finger (it was witnessed by the spinster home ec teacher who ran me to the principal's office) because he asked me to stop talking in line. This got me suspended but he thought it was a riot. We became very close throughout the rest of middle school.

I lost (I believe it was) 4 units of blood when a vaginal artery burst the night after I gave birth to my first daughter almost 25 years ago. They said I should have died that night. (And this was when AIDS was just coming to light but blood banks had not yet begun testing before infusions.)

My supervisor keeps trying to intimidate me into submission on the job, but he knows I'm a helluva lot smarter than he is. When he writes me up for something he deems a problem with me, I always know how to respond professionally and still manage to make him look bad without looking like it was my intention. Yeah, I'm bad. Don't try to bullshit me. He should be retiring soon, but I'll probably beat him out the door.

I could go on and on but y'all probably wouldn't believe some of it. Suffice it to say that I no longer fear much of anything except roaches and palmetto bugs. Throw me in the worst section of the ghetto, surround me with snakes and rats. I've been through hell and back quite a few times and it's true what they say. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

I'm a badass, yeah.

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We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess.
Mark Twain

Willravel

The ladies of badassery are gracing us with their badassoscity!!!

Plan9

I think butt-hurt has a hyphen.

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Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."

MSD

Some guy on the street made a lewd comment toward one of my female friends. I grabbed him and made it clear that he wasn't moving until he apologized.

I've responded to someone who was trying to start a fight with me by staring him down until he backed off, shaking my head, and walking away.

I took a fist to the nose in a mosh pit after someone mistook me for someone else (I'm not positive it was broken since I didn't go to a doctor, but breathing hurt for three weeks and it still feels squishy when I poke at it,) and was back in the pit for Killswitch Engage after sitting out while some crappy emo band played. The hit was hard enough that blood splashed off the guy's fist.
No, it's a compound word.

Plan9

Butthurt? Butthurtery?

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Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."

thespian86

I played Old Deuteronomy in Cats. Enough said.

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EX: Whats new?
ME: I officially love coffee more then you now.
EX: uh...
ME: So, not much.

Martian

I once saved an orphanage using only a cardboard tube, a paper clip and a wad of chewing gum.

Wait, no. That was Macgyver.

I have more scars at 24 than a lot of people will accumulate in a lifetime.

I live in chronic pain but refuse to take painkillers because I'm hardcore like that.

I don't leave home without my fedora.

__________________
I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame

Elphaba

My bad ass self comes out in the same way that a kick-me dog thinks it can take on a pit bull...reckless and stupid.

I volunteered at a mixed ward (murder and mental illness) at Napa State for six months and got to know the guys pretty well. The last night of my service, the staff warned that the patients were escalating in aggression and left the room to fend for myself. Sure enough, two of my "pals" went head to head and I immediately stepped between them. They towered over me, but I just said quietly "not tonight guys". They stopped in their tracks. I plastered a big smile on my face and we went to claim the last of the treats.

I didn't start shaking until I left the building later. I've done other stupid things of the like, but that one could have gotten me squashed like a bug or resulted in a ward wide melee.

Today, I prefer to use my withering stare.

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"You can't ignore politics, no matter how much you'd like to." Molly Ivins - 1944-2007

Seer666

I pissed off a SEAL so badly that he actually pointed at his Trident and asked me if I knew what that meant. I responded "Physically fit, mentally unstable?" His first class was laughing so hard he made him back off.

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Bad spellers of the world untie!!!

I am the one you warned me of

I seem to have misplaced the bullet with your name on it, but I have a whole box addressed to occupant.

snowy

I was a spunky kid who didn't put up with shit from others. When I was in 2nd grade, I was on my way back to my classroom from a bathroom break when I was cornered by THE 3rd grade bully, Alex. He tried to scare me, and I decked him, right in the nose. He started howling, and I got sent to the principal's office. My principal couldn't stop laughing. Luckily, when I punched another boy the next year (for being annoying), I had the same principal, and he found it just as funny.

In 5th grade, I happened to overhear someone on the bus making fun of my brother. I climbed over two bus seats, yanked the guy up by his collar, and punched him. No one makes fun of my brother, ever. Barb the bus driver found it impossible to write me up, though she probably should have.

Most of my favorite badass moments are intellectual, though, like sitting through several day-long tests in the course of being designated talented and gifted. My mother's favorite story is this: I was 8, and we were at the community fair with all of my grandparents. We were all sitting around a picnic table, enjoying some ice cream, when a local politician came by. Thinking he would shake some hands and pat the heads of some small children, he approached our table. He sort of patted me on the head and said, "Well, hey there, little girl. I'm -- and I'm running for the State Senate in November. Be sure to tell your folks to vote for me!" I replied that my parents were Democrats, and would never consider voting for him, being that he was a Republican running against a long-standing Democrat (and friend of my parents). Furthermore, I said, he was a pro-life candidate, and my parents were pro-choice. He backed away slowly, as if I were some kind of demon child.

I have three A- that I have earned in my college career that I consider to be pretty badass, given how difficult the courses were, and how much I learned. They're certainly worth more to me than any of the other grades I've earned.

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If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Tully Mars

That's good and I like your avatar.

Most Seals I knew were really low key guys. Just spent a couple days running around the Yucatan jungle searching for little know Mayan ruin sites with a ex Army special forces guy. I knew he was ex-Army but he never mentioned what he did the whole time. His wife made a point of telling me when we got back to civilization.

As to what brings out my bad ass? Nothing. Words are merely words and will not hurt you, walking away is almost always the best answer.

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I used to drink to drown my sorrows, but the damned things have learned how to swim- Frida Kahlo

Vice President Starkizzer Fan Club

Baraka_Guru

My mother dropped me once as a baby, and as a youth, I suffered from two concussions, yet I still managed to go through both college and university with a high GPA.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

biznatch

I am confident enough in my masculinity that I often walk my dog's wife, a female white toy poodle. While listening to rap(you gotta even things out).

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Check it out: The Open Source/Freeware/Gratis Software Thread

Martian

Your dog has a wife? What was the ceremony like?

__________________
I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame

Willravel

It was a beautiful ceremony.

echo5delta

I am SO gonna plagiarize that from here on out.

Me? Very few badass moments ever. One of the highlights:

Boot Camp: Our last big training even before graduation was the Marine Trail, combining a bunch of required events (bayonet assault course, boxing, 3-mile run with gear, etc.) on the same morning. We'd had the final Physical fitness Test (run, pullups, situps) two days before, and other than a small cramp ing my arm, I felt fine.

We get to the rope climb. Never had a problem with it, didn't this time either... until, 58.8 feet up the 60 foot rope, I let go with my right arm to slap the crossbeam. That little cramp in my left arm? Yeah, I let go.

160 lbs. of me, plus flak jacket, helmet, rubber rifle, web gear, slamming down into the sawdust with a highly motivated "AAHHHH, FUCK!" the whole way down.

Got in line, did it again, with the same exact result at 58.2 feet up. The Drill Instructors pretty much decided that was enough for the day and sent me onward to the boxing competition.

Seriously, though, boot camp was a friggin' blast for me the whole time. Well, the training was - not so much the DIs terrorizing us daily...

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"Peace" is when nobody's shooting. A "Just Peace" is when we get what we want. - Bill Mauldin

Glory's Sun

I'm so badass..I don't need an example.

Seer666

Feel free. It is a good one.

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Bad spellers of the world untie!!!

I am the one you warned me of

I seem to have misplaced the bullet with your name on it, but I have a whole box addressed to occupant.