Most bizzarre story you have ever written

Girl, with the last name Buck, was hit by a doe during the high school regional cross country race.

Girl lived on Deer Park Court (moved to Colorado less than two years later).

 

This reminds me of a story we had about carnies during a staff meeting last week. In fact, it got so funny I started taking notes. I'm going to transcribe it and post it on this thread because it is the most bizarre staff meeting comment ever.

 

Some Vampire-LARP group.

It was odd to say the least. Especially since they kept talking in Olde English during the interviews.

 

That might be one of the most awesome things I've ever read.

 

I can't remember which women's basketball coach is alleged to have said to a ref: "Usually when I get fucked I enjoy it."

 

High school football player is issued a jersey with the number 50. Wears it his entire sophomore year. Junior year comes around and some old timer claims the number was retired a long time ago (perhaps in the 1930s when the previous guy who wore it died in a car wreck).

Kid refused to give it up because he had bought jewelry with his number etched on it. The old timer claims everyone should have known because the number 50 is painted on the middle of the press box. Mind you, the number 50 is aligned with the 50 yard-line at the stadium.

I asked some school officials what they thought and everyone said "I thought that just marked the 50 yard-line."

 

That's twice as much ham!

 

My first bylined story and coverage for The Ann Arbor News was supposed to be a conference all-star/showcase swim meet. Except when I showed up to the host school, there were no busses in sight and the pool doors were locked.

I asked a couple kids walking out of the school if they knew about a swim meet, and they said a special-needs kid dropped a deuce in the pool, forcing it to be closed. Drove back to the paper and at first people didn't believe me. Confirmed it with the AD but wrote around it in the story for obvious reasons and called it a health hazard, I think.

The best part of the night: Copy desk folk shouting out mock headlines for the story, like 'Meet dumped' etc etc.

 

I had to write a story on a big rutabega or a potato. I don't remember and truth be told it wasn't that big - not even close to a state record.
One of our farmer jackasses (not to be confused with Farmer Jerome) called in thinking we should a story on his super tuber... The editor bit and voila'.
We ran the story with an 80-point hed, which was funny, 'cause somebody rather signifiacnt died a day or so later and got a much, much smaller head than the veggie.
To thos day I still ride the editor.
"Hey, this guy has a tomato that looks like a set of breasts and a potato in the shape of Don Rickles face? Do we want a story?"

 

I'm quite proud of my story about a nine-year-old boy who ended up in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the largest human tooth ever recorded.

Tooth and consequences: Mark Henry's monster tooth had to be pulled. It was painful. It was bloody. But it came out all right in the end.
Owen Sound Sun Times
Friday, October 7, 2005

Some people go through agonizing conditions to achieve immortality. Mark Henry is one of them.

But it was all worthwhile when he considered the reward he received for all the pain he went through and all the blood he lost in the process.

"Fifteen bucks," he said, the awe still evident in his voice.

No, it might not seem like much of a prize by itself, but the biggest payoff was still to come -- a Guinness World Record.

The nine-year-old Francis Lake boy is in the latest edition of the annual record book. His accomplishment? Having the largest human tooth, measuring 1.2 centimetres (0.47 inches) wide and 2.28 cm (0.9 inches) long.

"It was really big, so they decided to pull it out," Mark said, recalling the day his dentist, Dr. Gabriela Gandila of Owen Sound, extracted his top right front tooth.

Did it hurt?

"Really bad," he said. "It was bleeding like crazy and I had to eat soft food and drink water or milk."

"It wasn't easy for him, you know, and he did very well when we took the tooth out," said Gandila, adding the tooth's size would be "remarkable" for a person of any age, much less a young boy.

She's happy that Mark's family contacted Guinness to have the record documented.

"It's good that they did it. If he suffered the extraction, at least he has the reward to be in the book."

According to Guinness, the average width of a top front tooth, known in dental terms as a natural maxillary central incisor, is 0.82 millimetres (0.3 inches).

Mark's tooth was so big that it was preventing the tooth next to it, the maxillary right lateral incisor, from coming in. The staff at Dr. Gandila's office began calling it the horse tooth, while city orthodontist Dr. Lee Brown simply called it the monster.

"They were the ones that suggested putting it into the Guinness World Records," said Mark's mother, Mary Henry. "They said they'd never seen one that big."

They also couldn't explain why it was so big in the first place, considering his other permanent teeth are of normal size and so was his baby right front tooth.

"It just happened," Gandila said, laughing. "It's just a big, huge tooth, that's it."

"A freak of nature," Henry said, adding his lateral incisor will, with the help of braces, eventually take the front tooth's place.

The process of verifying the accomplishment was quick. The tooth was pulled January 18 and Guinness, which had never listed such a record before, acknowledged it April 1.

"They sent us a letter and said that they needed a picture showing the size and we had to get Dr. Gandila's signature and Dr. Brown's signature," said Henry, who placed the tooth next to a ruler before taking its picture.

A certificate of acknowledgement was sent to the family, although they were cautioned that the tooth might not get into the next edition due to publication deadlines. But the record did in fact make it, as they discovered last weekend at Smith Books at the Heritage Place mall in Owen Sound.

"We went into the bookstore on Sunday and Mark was just looking at the book," Henry said. "I found it in the book, and we had to buy it, of course."

"Weird at first," Mark said when asked how he felt when he first saw the record in the book.

And now?

"I think it's awesome."

Mark had only ever gotten a dollar or two from the tooth fairy before, so he was certainly surprised when she left $15 for this one. He's long since spent it, so long ago that he can't remember what he bought.

The tooth fairy also left the tooth behind as he asked her to in a note, but he lost it when he took it to school to show his speech therapist.

But Mark, who's in Grade 4 at Keppel-Sarawak Elementary School in Owen Sound, was planning to show the book and a photocopy of his certificate Thursday to his friends and teachers.

His older sister Amanda told their parents that Mark's tooth is the main topic of discussion on the school bus.

"He thinks he's famous," joked his mother. "Don't you?" she then asked her son.

"No!" came his quick, slightly embarrassed reply.

 

I didn't write this story, but I did work at the paper at the time it happened.
Young photog, who was a stringer for us, also was the official photog for USA Volleyball. He gets to go to the Montreal Olympics. After the Games, we plan to run a photo page with candid shots he took while in Montreal.
One of the photos is a random guy, not ID'd, outside Olympic Stadium holding a bunch of tickets above his head. The caption says something like, "A scalper has tickets to sell outside of Olympic Stadium."
Here comes the colossal coincidence.
The guy in the photo lived in our city (which was 3,000 miles from Montreal) and he worked at an English bar called Sweeney Todd's Pub. And we called this guy who worked at Sweeney Todd's Pub a "scalper." And he sued us.
I remember the lawyers getting a big laugh out of this. I think we printed some sort of retraction and I don't think any money changed hands.

 

There was a time that I had written an article that I thought was just a test as part of my interview (you know, to see if you can actually write on deadline and talk to people you don't know on the phone and get quotes), and someone called me the next day informing me the stupid thing went up on D1...