What absurd things have happened to you?

This is interesting

There was a bomb scare in my office building because some guy with fake explosives strapped to him was having a fit because he didn’t get to be on the Price is Right.

@The_Compassionate_Heretic Sounds reasonable to me.

When I was 19 years old I once cut my mid-back length hair to just above my shoulders. When I woke-up the next morning I went into the bathroom as usual, I looked in the mirror (mind you I have vision problems, and my world is pretty blurry until I put on my glasses) and the thought that popped into my head was wow, I look like a girl For a split second I had a male consciousness; I really felt like I was a man for a second. That is one of the most bizarre things to ever happen to me. I have no idea that was about.

New Years Eve party maybe 15 years ago. It was a few seconds before midnight and we were all crowded around the center of the room where they were going to drop a ball at midnight. We were very close together. As I’m standing there I can feel my skirt lifting up and a hand on my butt. I turn my head to the right and there is this cute girl with this huge smile on her face. I was dumbfounded. She didn’t move her hand and just smiled and I couldn’t even think what to do. Just as I was coming to my senses and was about to slap her hand away the ball dropped she looked at me, leaned over and pecked me on the cheek said “happy new year” and she was gone. I have no idea who she was and I never saw her the rest of the night nor ever again.

@Sueanne_Tremendous which cheek? :)

At a convention, I was very attracted to a person there, and spent several days with him. Somehow the subject of Annette Funicello came up. All the males at the table said they were in love with her, including my guy, with his arm around me, but she was too old for him. She is a few months older than I am, but he didn’t know that.

We’ve been married nearly 35 years now, so he’s had time to get used to it.

Today as a matter of fact. I have been out of town for 4 days and I forgot to pack my medication (oops). While I was at the airport this evening I ran into a guy that works in the same division I do (who was also returning from an out of town trip). He called out to me at the airport and for whatever reason (I’m sure the absence of my meds were culprit) I honestly thought he was someone else. I’m sure he thinks I’m nuts now because of the conversation we had. As I was driving home reviewing the conversation in my head I realized how absurd it must have been….guess I have some ‘splaining to do.

I was about 13 and riding in the back seat of the car with my parents down the interstate in the middle of a storm. All of the sudden the whole car lit up. It was like a negative image of just our car and everything in it. We had been hit by lightening. It went away. We never said a word about it. I think we were all dumbstruck.

When I was cashiering, two customers started a fight in my line. Punches were thrown. Another customer split them up.

Sometimes I like to take a notebook, go find a parking lot to sit in, and people-watch while I write or listen to the radio or just think.

One day I was in a McDonald’s parking lot with my window rolled down because there was a nice breeze. My car was facing away from the building because I was watching the convenience store lot across the street. (It’s more fun if you can’t hear what people are saying to each other, because then you can make up stories about who they are what they’re doing without being influenced.) Suddenly, there was a man at my window, practically leaning inside my car as he talked to me.

He proceeded to tell me the story of a(n American) football-sized potato that he ate when he visited Idaho once. It was, he claimed, the best potato he’d ever had. He ended his story with, “I just wanted to tell you that” and then walked away. I sat in stunned silence for a few moments and then called after him, “Thanks…?”

A couple worth mentioning. First one, when I was about nineteen, I was driving my Dad’s truck in town. I wasn’t watching the road (since there was a very pretty girl on the sidewalk to stare at instead) and crashed into a sailboat on a trailer being towed by four very big muscular guys. They all piled out of their car and I swore I was dead meat. They made sure I was okay and we exchanged insurance info, etc. It was a minor accident, but smacking into that mast scared the fuck out of me.

Second, when I worked at a print shop about five years ago, the guy that washed our windows was a fundy Christian, and he pulled up at our front door at the exact same time as another couple, that happened to be JWs. It was odd to watch them out there in our parking lot, arguing about whose belief in God was correct. They were yelling at each other loud enough to hear them through the glass.

These sorts of thing happens to me on a regular basis, so I barely think of them as odd or absurd. Sometimes I feel like the luckiest guy in the world when I get to be part of absurd incidents.

I witnessed a drive-by shooting and had to testify for the prosecution and the defense (but not on the same day).

I watched my husband take out a guy who he noticed breaking into a car. He saw it out of the corner of his eye as we were driving down a busy street. I had to turn into the parking lot and my hubby took him down.

Then there’s the time a towed vehicle got loose and came within two inches of smashing me into pieces.

And the time my car caught on fire because I didn’t check the oil and I threw a rod through the engine.

There’s more. I’ll come back.

When I was working at the theater I was cleaning up around outside the building. In one of the exits I found a half eaten bag of macaroni and cheese (seriously, a plastic bag like you get at the grocery store) and a used condom.

Someone is a cheap date.

i’m trying to think of something really strange and awesome that’s happened to me. only two things are popping into my head. once i went into the bathroom at barnes&noble and this elderly woman came in as i was washing my hands. she asked me what day it was, and then she told me that everything was going to be fine, and i should just relax and take each day as it came, and have faith. i wish i could remember the exact thing she said

another time, my friends and i were about to go to burger king before a show. we saw this really dusty old van and started writing things in the dust. we drew a peace sign, a few hearts, and flowers and whatnot. the owners came out of burger king, and we kind of started walking away because, hey, that’s pretty awkward. but then they started yelling at us and chasing us. it was a huge (really tall and buff) guy and a shorter pretty heavy woman. they chased us and yelled at us for like 15 minutes, and it was the scariest thing ever. lesson learned: never trace peace promoting pictures in dirt on a car. stick to the obligatory “wash me”

@MacBean that is such a cool story. i love random encounters like that. and i love people watching.

A couple weeks ago-late on a Sunday evening some high school aged kids came into the store. One was dressed as a bottle of ketchup and the other was dressed like a stunt man-white jumpsuit, helmet, red cape. All of a sudden they started like wrestling each other right in the main aisle. They were fighting pretty hard, like throwing each other down and what not. I went over and yelled at them to stop it but they ignored me. I called for management and about that time another kid, dressed in a black suit with aviator sunglasses on came and tackled the Evel Knievel guy that’s what I called him
and wrestled him to the ground while Ketchup just watched. Then the black suit guy actually handcuffed Evel Knievel and walked him out of the store while Ketchup was following. They got out pretty quick, the manager ran up there but they were outside by the time he got there. Only about four people saw all this. A lot of people didn’t believe us and I ended up drawing pictures of the costumes. I kept telling everyone…how the hell would I dream up that Evel Knievel and Ketchup got in a fight and an FBI type arrested one of them?!

I was riding in a SUV when we had to swerve to miss an old lady standing in the middle of the highway… like on the yellow dotted line. We ran off the road and flipped four times. When we landed and saw everyone was okay, I saw the lady still standing in the road, waving down traffic because she thought everyone should slow down. This is the only time in my life I have wanted to beat up an old lady. I almost got arrested.

It was a hot summer day. So I walked down to Safeway to get a fountain soda. While I was approaching the store I saw a guy standing outside of it. To be honest I thought he might be asking for money so I decided to avoid him. I typically give money to those who ask but didn’t have any extra on me this time. Anyhow by the time I got to the door I didn’t need to avoid him because he wasn’t there. So I was getting my soda and all of the sudden there he is. Talking to me. Let me say this now. He never asked for or even hinted that he needed any money.

So he came up to me and asked to touch my finger. I thought this was odd but for some reason I wasn’t threatened at all. So I humored him. He touched my finger with his. He then proceeded to tell me all about myself and my future. The stuff he said about me was fairly accurate and specific. He then asked to touch my palms. At this point I was a bit enthralled if not ‘weirded out’ so I let him. He told me a bit more. Then he just said that it was nice to meet me and hoped we’d cross paths again sometime. And he left. He never asked for money or tried to pickpocket me or anything of that nature.

I still don’t know what to make of it.

Oh, I thought of another one:

I was taking a Greyhound to visit a friend in Arkansas. My mom was waiting with me at the bus terminal. There was this guy that was walking around the outside of the room holding a pot of violets. He was barefoot and talking to himself. He would stop every once in a while and bark real loud and stuff. Later he went to the bathroom and came out with one of the violets stuck in his hair. Right on top, like a little antenna.
Of course the bus was late, so we got to watch this guy for a while. He sat by the wall and slept for a while. He went across the street and pulled down his pants, showing off his junk to passing cars. I finally went and called the cops and they just blew it off. He came back and sat down and my mom says aloud “I hope he’s not going where you are going!” When the bus finally came, he ran up to the counter and bought a ticket real quick. No one wanted him to get on that bus. So when he tried to the driver told him he couldn’t because he was barefoot. The guy pushed the driver down and ran to the back seat and grabbed a high heel shoe out of his bag and kinda put it on his foot, it was way to small. I was totally freaked out. My mom was outside telling me to sit still and be quiet. The driver and a couple other guys got on the bus and thankfully dragged his ass off.

@johnpowell: or the casanova was making sweet, sweet love to the warm mac-n-cheese . . .

I once thought I was pantless halfway through the school day. I just freaked and grabbed my thighs. When i tried to explain…....Everyone was looking at me…......

The time I broke my nose diving into a pool that wasn’t ten feet deep as my young daughter had told was perfectly absurd!

One night while my husband was working the overnight shift at a gas station, I heard all the action of him being robbed at gun-point.

@figbash said what I was afraid to say…

My wife and I were traveling through farmland in southern France and came upon a sign pointing up a dirt road climbing a steep hill. It was an official government sign from the bureau of historical monuments saying that on top of that hill was King Henry IV’s bed. We had to see that, of course, so we wound up the rutted track and found this nondescript, but very old, chateau.

We banged on the massive wooden gate, which set a dog barking on the other side, but no answer. After a couple of minutes and a few more knocks, we were turning back to the car, when the gate creaked open and a huge man emerged with a German shepherd on a chain. My curiosity about the bed had vanished by this point, but we did need to explain what we were doing there, so we said we had seen the sign. His menacing demeanor softened a bit, and he ushered us into a surreal old hall.

He explained that only the bed was publicly protected as an historical monument, while the crumbling chateau that housed it was still the private property of an absentee family. The matriarch of the family having just died, the heirs were busily selling off all of the artwork and furniture that the chateau had contained. So our guide (a former boxer named Olivier, we learned) walked us through the darkened rooms, pausing every now and then in front of a less-faded rectangle on the wall where a picture had once hung, or a bare spot on the floor once occupied by a piece of furniture, and described in well-rehearsed detail the venerable artifact that wasn’t in front of us.

Finally, Oliver led us upstairs to the fabled bed. It was a canopied masterpiece of intricate needlecraft, the result of years of labor by a few local medieval lasses, all to be occupied by the royal carcass only a couple of nights. The ceiling of the room offered only nominal protection from the elements; the walls and other sparse furnishings were severely water-damaged. The bed could not be removed from this spot by order of the French authorities, but the owners of the chateau were under no obligation to keep the bedroom in good repair.

As we soaked in the horrific decrepitude around us, Olivier went to the tall french windows, flung them open, and began serenading us in an enthusiastic baritone. We tried to look appreciative.

The tour over, Olivier ushered us back to the gate, pausing to nod toward a squat lodging on the chateau grounds where he lived as caretaker along with his wife, whom he referred to as “the peasant”. Walking out of that gate was like traversing a wormhole from some alternate universe back into our own.

@Harp That sounds… absolutely surreal. Wow…

I once took the internet seriously.

@Blondesjon haven’t we all, at one time or another?

Probably the most absurd thing was the time a completely naked man was pounding on the door to the apartment I was babysitting at. The police caught him outside, still naked.

@augustlan Did you ever find out if there was a reason for this public nudity?

@MacBean Well, it started when he was flashing us from his apartment window across the way. Being young teenage girls, my friend and I kept peeking through the blinds after we’d closed them to block out his flashing. Apparently, he took this as an invitation to bring his naked self on over. About 5 minutes after we’d stopped peeking, there’s a knock on the door. I see him (in all his ‘glory’) through the peephole, and back quietly away from the door. When we didn’t open the door, or respond to the knocking in any way, he became increasingly incensed. Pounding on the door and yelling “You know you want me… I saw you looking! Open the damn door!” Scared the shit right out of us.

Side note: This was not the only ‘naked man outside’ my friend and I ran into, either. We saw a total of 3 different naked dudes outside around our neighborhood in a 2 year time frame! All of these incidents were in broad daylight, too. Yes, it was a bad neighborhood. Why do you ask?

A haven for schizophrenics, perhaps? There’s a person in my group who is schizophrenic and he did something similar. Followed a woman into the women’s room at a department store and proceeded to strip himself. I asked him what he was thinking, and he said he imagined that this women would have sex with him. I don’t think there was any question in his mind about this at the time.

i was on vacation with my friend on this island. i was sleeping on the screened in porch and she was sleeping upstairs (on the same floor as her aunt). all of a sudden she comes downstairs and wakes me up. a drunk guy had just walked in the house, went upstairs,and laid down next to her bed. he had asked her who she was and if she had fruit loops and before she could get her glasses on he was gone. later we heard he had been to the three houses next door.