Caught in a lie
"A co-worker started telling me and another co-worker a story about being stopped by the police," a reader writes. "He went into great detail about how he stopped at a petrol station for a drink and there were two cops standing out front and nobody else in the parking lot. He gave the cops a wave, being nice, bought his drink, and left. Less than a hundred feet down the street these same two cops pulled him over. They told him that they smelled weed when he got out of the car ... They asked if they could search his car, which he angrily let them ... While one cop did the 'search' the other cop told him to calm down ... To which he said 'I'm not pissed, I'm angry. You didn't smell weed, you smelled a shaved head and tattoos.' The cops found nothing and let him go about his business ... The lie was, it was MY story. It happened to ME months before and I told that story at work back then. He even quoted me, except I said 'Long hair and tattoos'. A few minutes into the story my other co-worker and I start giving each other the side eye, realising he was literally telling me my own story ... I had such a bad case of second-hand embarrassment for the guy. Plus everybody else already heard about it and he was forever branded the liar."
Having a blast at school
"I went to Wesley College in the 50s and 60s," writes Jim Rollerson. "Our science teacher told us of setting the land speed record at an airstrip in the UK with a truck and a jet engine bolted to the deck. He had kept the engine and one day we all gathered in the school hall. He had bolted the said engine to the stage, and with us all sitting at the sides of the hall, fired it up to demonstrate the power. What an experience! Flames, noise and enough thrust to rip the curtains and crack the windows at the back of the hall."
Bean Rock adventure
In the summer of 1948 Shaun Reilly was 14 years old.
"We were heading to the Bay of Islands but stopped at Mission Bay for a while. An entrepreneur was hiring out little canoes for a few shillings for half an hour. I was keen but needed someone to share. Another boy, a perfect stranger, was nearby and I got him to come with me. We set out out and decided to head for Bean Rock Lighthouse. We never looked back till we were almost on the rocks in front of the lighthouse ... the wavelets breaking over the rocks caused a little apprehension and looking back it was hard to see the people on the beach. We paddled back to shore taking over an hour and a half to get back. Funny thing was, we hadn't told our respective parents what we were doing and nobody had missed us."