I was driving home from the grocery store today when I passed a golf cart parked at the end of a driveway. The driver was slumped over with his forehead against the steering wheel and his arms dangling down at his sides. You know, exactly like a dead body. So, I turned around, went back and pulled over on the side of the road. I grabbed my cell phone and got out of the car, fully expecting to be calling 911 and really wishing I’d taken a CPR class or something.
I walked over to the golf cart, which by the way, is parked about 2 feet from a pretty busy highway with cars whizzing by left and right. Not the best place to park your golf cart, even if you are dead. Before I got to the cart, the man suddenly sat up and looked right at me and said “What can I do for ya?”
I asked him if he was alright because he looked unconscious when I drove by. He replied “I’m alright-just got a little tired and decided to take me a nap.”
He looked perfectly fine–didn’t seem drunk or disoriented and wasn’t pale or even sweaty at all. I asked him if he was sure he was okay and asked if he needed anything, like a drink of water or a ride home or something. But he assured me he was just fine and told me thanks for stopping to check on him.
Then he smiled at me, said bye and then settled himself right back into the dead body position! :eek:
I wonder how many other passersby he freaked out this morning.
There’s a number of homeless people around here, and they often just sleep wherever they get tired. One man apparently got tired while pushing his shopping cart around and because the sun was rather hot, must have decided to nap in the shade of his cart. So he just stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, stretched out under his cart, and had a nap.
I was sitting in a parking lot, watching this take place. A good number of the people driving by slowed and looked backwards, but none stopped, and a few yelled out the window to him to “Wake up!” or yell obscenities at him, etc. If I hadn’t seen him preparing for his nap, I would not have been able to tell if he was alive or dead - he looked for all the world as if he’d just collapsed and been rolled over by his own cart - but not one person even stopped to see if he was ok. Sad stuff.
I had an almost identical moment a few years back with an elderly lady in a bank parking lot; slimped over, no movement, sunny day and it had to be uncomfortable. I got to within 20’ and she sat up and got something from the passenger seat. I made a quick turn and walked off.
A friends father dropped dead while riding his bike. Thank goodness someone stopped and called an ambulance to they didn’t have to find him on the side of the road when he didn’t return as expected.
A friend of mine once drove to a shopping center to run some errands, parked the car and, in the few moments it would have taken her to get her stuff together, dozed off at the wheel. She woke up four hours later, groggy, hot and thirsty. (It was a warm day.) She was mortified to realize what had happened – she noticed a nearby store employee obviously watching the car to see if she were okay – and finally realized her roommate and I weren’t kidding when we said she had to cut back on her schedule some.
I was at a local pizza joint waiting for my slice and my eyes landed on a early middle age man and his, I presume, son, about eight years old.
The guy was just sitting there, head down as if saying grace, sleeping. His son was watching him and munching his pizza. I watched him for about a minute. As I got my slice, I was going to go over and wake him up, make sure he was okay, when an employee walked over and tapped him on the shoulder. The employee asked if he was okay or going to be driving or anything. He said he was waiting for the kid’s mom to come pick him up, and he just hadn’t slept in a couple of days. He had a ride, and looked rather embarrassed.
I was glad to see that there were concerned people besides me.
I crew for hot air balloons, so I’m up at the crack of dawn every morning.
I was out in the country, chasing the balloon, and off to the side was a blue Cavalier stopped in a gravel area off the side of the road. There was someone lying face down, spread eagled beside the car.
Luckily, someone else had already stopped, and were just about to go try and wake the person up. It was pretty funny actually… They had that “I think that guy’s dead, but I’d better give him a poke with a stick just in case” look… Pretty unique… It made my day.
I kept my eye on the news for the next couple days, so I assume the person wasn’t dead.
When we both worked the night shift (for different employers), Mr. S would often pull over for a quick snooze in his pickup truck on the way home. A few times he was meeting me after work in our parking lot and I came out to find him in the driver’s seat with his head thrown back, mouth wide open. Quite a sight. I’m amazed he never provoked a call to 911.
My girlfriend and I had just finished a day at our local Ren Faire (which was awesome, btw) and as we’re threading our way through the parking lot to find her car, I see a 20something man, healthy looking save for the fact that he’s lying on the ground, not moving. And the position he’s in (parallel to the cars he’s in between, one leg bent, one arm stretched out in front of him and under his head) made it plausible that he had collapsed on his way to getting to his car. I went over to him, and it turns out he was just having a nap. Which, IMO, is better than the alternative. Still very weird though.
Oddly enough, a few weeks ago my husband and I drove up to a movie theater to check out the next showtimes and saw a man slumped forward on a bench asleep, with his hand on his bike parked next to the bench. . When we returned 30 minutes later, the man was still there and still asleep. One of the ticket takers told us that he was homeless and was taking his daily nap there in the shade. There is a homeless shelter a few blocks from the theater so I’m hoping he was coming from there.
No idea why I seem to have a talent for spotting people taking naps like that. I think it runs in the family though, as my dad once roused a man at the end of their driveway who was “taking a nap” with his head on the side of the road and his body in the lane of the highway! :eek: Turns out the man was falling down drunk (literally) and his friends had dumped him out of a car on the side of the road. Some friends, huh?
On the occasions that I’ve needed a car nap, I usually worry that people will worry after me, so I stick a piece of paper in the window that says something like “sleeping- I’m fine”. I hate seeing people conked out in a car or in a weird place- I always worry there’s something wrong.
I used to work at a retail store. One day, a customer came in to return something, but in the middle of the transaction, he stated that he wasn’t feeling very well, and would come back later to complete the return.
About three hours later, another customer came in and told us we needed to call an ambulance, because there was a man who appeared to be dead in his car.
It was the first customer, and he was dead. We all felt guilty about not knowing about it, but since we were all inside, and we didn’t have any routine going around and checking cars in the parking lot for dead bodies, there really wasn’t anything we could have done about it.
I’ve done this when I take a nap in the parking lot when I’m working a split shift. After the shuttle bus driver stopped once to check on me, I would either alert him to the fact I was going to nap for an hour, or put up a sticky note that said…"not dead, just sleeping, thanks for checking.
I was power-walking around a track, and i went by a bench where a large old man was lying. I thought “he’s just napping…” and walked on by. Well I got to thinking “it’s a hot day. I"m not sure he was breathing. Maybe he’s collapsed!”, so as I walked by again, I walked more slowly. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not. I was getting closer and was about to walk right up to him and ask if he was okay, when his stomach moved and he let out a gigantic fart. Then he turned over on the bench. That was enough sign of life for me.
Once I drove up behind a guy slumped over his steering wheel at a stop sign. I got out and asked him if he was all right. He looked up and mumbled that he was OK. I offered to give him a ride home, 'cause he seemed quite drunk. He refused, and put his car into gear. By the time I got back in my car and started to drive home, he had weaved half a mile down another street, where a cop pulled him over.
In July of this year, my best friend was found slumped over the steering wheel of his truck. He was dead.
I saw a guy that was leaning into his car trunk, he was really far in and one foot was off the ground. Needless to say this looked really bizarre, and after not moving for literally a minute, I started to walk over to him. He finally moved, and which point I told him I thought his ass was dead, but glad he wasn’t.
I checked on a cab driver once. He was parked in the lee of a median. The road widened prior to actually getting to the median, and there was this “no-man’s-land” bit of road there, in a residential neighborhood. That’s where he was parked. He had his head down over the wheel. I would have never forgiven myself if something were wrong – so I stopped and tapped on the glass. Just sleeping!
That’s the only time I’ve ever seen this, but apparently it’s pretty common.
I was driving to work down Peachtree Rd. (busy main thoroughfare) one morning a few years ago. I happened to look to my right and saw a person sprawled out in the middle of the sidewalk. After thinking “WTF??”, I pulled into a dry clearner’s parking lot a little ways down the road, parked, and started walking back up to see if she (it was a young woman) was ok. There were a couple of ladies at the dry cleaners that had decided to do the same thing so we all walked back up there together.
Gal had had a seizure or something, and had collapsed on the sidewalk. Someone called 911 for her, and we stayed with her till the paramedics got there. She had some meds in her open purse, but we didn’t want to go digging around in her stuff, since we were just civilians, ya know?
I hope she was ok. I watched the news, but didn’t see anything more about her.