Extremely strange people you come across

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I can’t remember if this story has been told or not but quite recently I met who could only be described as the Strange, Scary and Possibly Homicidal Christian who I’ll now refer to as Steve.

One night I decided to take a quiet walk up to Lincoln Cathedral, which if anyone has made the journey knows is quite a physical task. Anyway, I figure it’s about 9pm. No-one about apart from me and some guy about 50 feet away. Floodlights illuminate the Cathedral and I start to enjoy my quiet time. That is until I hear a voice behind me say, “Beautiful isn’t it?” Some guy has now approached me and introduces himself as “Steve”. He then asks me, “Do you believe in God?” The sheer forwardness of the man throws me off and I give him a non-chalant maybe. He then proceeds to tell of the wonderful miracles he has witnessed from his Lord Jesus Christ. Okay I don’t hold the same views but I won’t judge the man on this. What I will judge him on is that when the conversation died down to the occasional spurt he said and I quote:

Now let me put everything within a timeframe from here.

T = 0 seconds: A complete stranger tells me he has an urge to “sin”. A well-built male stranger who could probably physically overpower me.

T = 1-8 seconds: A very emotionally charged silence unsues. My hand carefully feels around in my pocket for some sort of weapon to defend myself.

T = 10 seconds: The floodlights illuminating the Cathedral (and surrounding area) are turned off.

:eek:

Thankfully, Steve finished his sentence with “…but Jesus helps me through those times.”

Phew. Steve then informs me that the floodlights can be switched on again by putting money in a slot around the corner. I thank him for the information but decide to make my way home and say my goodbyes. As I leave he tells me of a party he’ll soon be having with his friends.

I’ve been back to the Cathedral a few times now and have yet to find that money slot for the floodlights. That I find most frightening.

22

Where do I start ? There is Greg, a Schitzophrenic, who wears head phones to keep out the " noise " . I know this because he told us that was why he wore them. We also have the "Briefcase Man “, who talks to No One, but carries a briefcase full of women’s underware ads. Then there is the Secret Sh—er who regularly takes a dump in the urinal. I think he’s part sasquatch, by the load he leaves. We also have " Dirty Santa " , he looks like old saint nick , but he doesn’t act like him. He panhandles, he " tries” to get free food, but his best trick ; is to Drink the creamers ! :eek: They really aren’t that tasty.
I could go on but I’ll save those for later.

23

Several years ago, Harborwolf and I were in Galveston, Texas. Harborwolf nudged me and pointed towards the beach. “Look at that guy,” he said. I looked, saw a regular guy and shrugged. “No,” Harborwolf said, “You’re not seeing him.” I looked again, saw a different guy, nothing special. “So what,” I said, getting annoyed. “No, I really don’t think you’re seeing him. Look at THAT guy,” he pointed. I looked really hard, and then I saw him. A VERY large man was standing on the seawall. He wore grey briefs that had probably been white at one time. They were ill-fitting and sagging. He also wore a reflective orange safety vest.

A few days later, my mother and I were at the grocery store in Galveston and I saw him AGAIN. He still wore the safety vest, but he’d traded his grey briefs for teal ones. :eek:

24

Incubus,

The filipina is probably angry about being characterized as male. :wink:

My wife would give you her patented Glare-Of-Death for calling her a filipino!

25

Hey everyone. I’m new here so if you don’t know who I am it’s ok.
The summer I turned 18 I moved into a really cheap crackhead apartment with my friend. We weren’t crackheads but the rent was cheap and the cops weren’t around much so it suited our needs. Anyways he had lived there for a while with his GF but when they split I moved in. So my friend already knew some of the other people who lived there. The guy from the other side of the parking lot was Paul. Paul liked to spy on us from the bushes. People would always be telling us about the weird guy who would be hiding in the bushes drinking beer. Most mornings Paul would stop by with something new to sell us for crack, beer, whatever he was on. In the two months I lived there he tried to sell us, a gateway computer, a waterbed, a regular bed, vicodin, a stereo, a car stereo and the broken car cd changer out of another friends car who lived in a different apartment but in the same place. Oh wait I forgot about the case of frozen shrimp. He tried that one the first morning I was there. Our landlord was no treat either. For years he was the local nut. He would and still does mow his lawn in a g-string or a see-through nightie and g-string. Not a pretty sight. People in the town would often make claims that he was naked mowing his lawn and local hooligans would make him a target for pellet and paintball gun drive-bys. So he would always have his video camera out on a tripod so that he could prove he had clothes on. We later found a stand with flyers in the yard advertising his transgender self produced films. Not porn but independant movies. I’ll have to try and dig up the flyer. I know I have it somewhere. The apartment was a POS but our lawn was always very neat.
Those are the weirdest people I have ever come across

26

Today I had another run-in with a fairly well-known Vancouver oddball by the name of Scotty.

His schtick is accosting people on public transit or in eateries and talking animatedly about hockey. He has a certain manic energy and nothing you can say will prevent him from holding forth. He’ll sit right next to you and tell you exactly what the Canucks are doing wrong, or what they should concentrate on next season, if it isn’t hockey season. If you live in Vancouver and go to cafes or ride the bus, it’s a statistical inevitability that you’ll encounter Scotty a couple of times a year. The third time I met him, the conversation went something like this. “Hi. I’m Scotty.” (He never remembers that he’s talked to you before.") “Erm.” “Did you see the game last night?” “Hey Scotty, do you know what I like better than talking about hockey with strangers?” “What?” “Inserting a red-hot wire into my eurethra.” “Did you see what Anatoli Semenov did? That guy’s amazing! He…” (And like that, for twenty minutes. Scotty never hears anything you say to him, or if he does, it doesn’t effect his monologues.)

What’s worse is when you’re eating. He walks into the place and sits down at your table. He asks for food off your plate, or to have a sip of your beer, or whatever. This isn’t a begging ploy, really. It’s just that he has absolutely no inhibitions.

Anyway, today was a bit different. I was having a glass of beer with my lunch. Scotty comes over to my table and says, “You’re drinking that stuff at this time of day?” (It was a little after 3:30 in the afternoon.) “Yeah, Scotty. I like some carbs with my protein.” Now he’s pointing at me and shouting at the people at the table next to mine: “Look at him! Look at him!” They look at Scotty and then look away. I guess Scotty notices at this point that they’re both drinking bottled Bud, because he cranes his head to look at the clock. Then he runs over to another table to tell a couple of coffee-drinking students that I’m having a beer. Now he has the waitress’s attention and she runs around the counter and tells him he has to leave. “I have to leave? But he’s drinking beer!” “What are you ordering?” “I’m just here to see my friends.” “You have to see your friends somewhere else today, Scotty.”

I wonder if Scotty is happy. I don’t think he has any friends of the usual sort – I think from his point of view, the city is populated entirely by his friends. I don’t think he has the capacity to discern that his friends are constantly annoyed or disturbed by him.

Then there’s the old man who harangues anybody he catches sitting cross-legged with dire warnings about how it will cause a fatal embolism, until they relent and sit flat-footed. “Seven children die every year!” Okay, buddy.

27

I had one particularly strange night wondering the streets of San Francisco.

First was the bag lady, wondering from garbage can to garbage can scavenging for food. She was obviously embarrassed by this, and would say loudly every time she scavenged “I lost my credits cards. I put them in here earlier today, and I need them back” over and over again, like a mantra.

Two blocks up from her was hanging man. He was on a street corner, 2 feet off the ground, hanging on to an overhead pipe by his hands. He was still hanging there as I passed by again twenty minutes later.

And then, just as we were getting back to our hotel. This was in a bad part of the city. We had to step over a group of homeless people lying in the gutter, injecting crack, to get into our hotel. There, across the street was a woman in her fifties. Thick white fur coat, high heels, lots of jewelry, walking her husband on a leash. He was wearing nothing but a dog collar and tighty whities.

That was the night I really fell in love with San Francisco.

28

My word. You saw Lady Sally walking Charles the were-beagle.

29

When I was 16, I was flying back to Detroit from Dallas after visiting my best friend. Traveling by myself, which was nothing new to me, but it doesn’t mean I had any special kungfu training.

I was shy and sitting on an aisle seat. The window seat was occupied by a Businessman. The man in the middle I will never forget.

Dressed in outdated and never in style polyester plaid pants, checked suit coat, white socks and docksiders. Bible in hand. Yeah, baby.

The captain made the announcement that our flight was delayed because of X amount of other planes waiting for take off. We would be on the ground probably another 30 minutes before clearance.

Mr. Polyester Pants Guy next to me said in an average voice something like, " It’s ok, Jesus is watching out for all of us."

Instinctively I knew not to make eye contact with this guy. Out of my perphial vision I saw the Businessman quickly bring up his newspaper to have it act as a force field.

I was not so lucky. I had only a small book and that wasn’t large enough to use as a block against this man and his Mission.

I was young. shy and made the fatal mistake of making eye contact with this loon.

His first words to me were, " Have you found Jesus?"

The words out of my mouth came from an out of body experience. Shyly, but semi-firmly I said, " I didn’t even know he was missing."

That made the Businessman let out a snort of laughter and made Mr. Polyester Pants man stop in his tracks. He didn’t bother me the rest of the flight.
Shirley: 1
Religous Loon: Zip

30

If I ever run into Scary Christian Steve again I’ll be sure to remember this. Thanks for the laugh Shirley

31

I’d been in London two days working in Piccadilly Circus, before on a cig break I saw lingerie businessman dude. This guy was about 50, had a black bra on, thong, suspenders and for some reason best known to himself (because it wasn’t known to me) one sock suspender thing, and polished brogues, carrying a briefcase, he walked calmly across the road towards us and then right past, like it wasn’t no thang.
It may have been a bet or something though. Theres enough crazy Harold Ramps in Soho to populate a battlefield, and for some reason they always seem attracted to me like I’m a hobo magnet or summat.

32

There’s this guy who paces the sidewalk outside a halfway house downtown. Big guy. Think Tiny Lister with lots of hair. Well he stomps back and forth under the trees glaring at the cars slowly passing. Sometimes he will shout and shake his fist. That is, until you wave at him. Just a wave and a smile and this grumpy giant of a man grins, jumping up and down, clapping like a kid on Christmas morning. Then he waves back just as hard as he can. I love this guy.

33

Have you found Jesus?

Yes, but I wish he’d be more original. I swear, when we play hide and seek he always hides behind the sofa.
My favorite all time strange person was a woman who lived in the same apartment house as me back in my mid 20’s. The house had a huge wrap around porch and several swings. She’d come out of her apartment at night, whether it was freezing cold or warm, sit in a swing and cry all night. During the day, we never saw her. Only at night on the porch, swinging and crying.

34

I’m reposting an anecdote of mine from a similar thread from last year, just because it made such a weird impression on me at the time:

Now’s probably the time to state that I’ve never done anything stronger than alcohol or caffeine in my life, and I was on neither at the time I saw this event. I was also not sleep-deprived, hallucinating, or dreaming. (I think. I hope.)

I’ve worked in downtown Chicago for several years now, and have taken the L (elevated train/subway) enough while working there, usually when I don’t have a ticket for the shuttle bus to my workplace. I’d never seen anything truly weird on it though, or if I had it pales in comparison to this.

It’s about 6:00 on a weeknight, and I’m on the L on the way to the train station. There are a few other people in my car. We stop, doors open, I hear one person get on but don’t really look. I hear the newcomer start to preach quietly, but it doesn’t sound all hateful or anything, so I just glance over. I blink. I glance again. Then I try to do the looking-out-of-the-corner-of-my-eye thing so as to try to scope this situation out without just staring. Fortunately for my sanity at this point, I see other people in the car doing the same thing.

The guy is slim, tall, and has some kind of very worn cloth padding on all over his body, over a sweatshirt and jeans. He has on high boots, shin guards, some kind of chest padding that laces up the back (and I notice is carefully laced up), forearm guards, some kind of gloves. He has with him one of those handcarts like they use in grocery stores or warehouses, the upright kind that you put a few boxes on. On it are a couple of those milk crates with something in them, and a large, oversized ball of some kind (basket or football, brown, large hole as if a lid had popped off - obviously a novelty thing and not a real ball) on top of the whole lot.

But here’s the really weird part. On his face he had some kind of silver mask, or else the best silver makeup job I’ve ever seen - because I swear the mouth on the mask moved properly as he spoke. Mind you, I didn’t look really closely because I was trying to not make eye contact, but it looked very smooth and seamless. It was a definite contrast to the extremely worn padding that he had on.

My little brain was still trying to deal with the cognitive dissonance while trying to take in as much information as possible to figure the whole thing (I noticed as he got close - he was slowly walking back and forth in the car, preaching calmly about how the end time was near - that he didn’t smell bad or anything, so I’m not sure he was homeless), and then the car pulled up to my stop. I got out and felt almost dazed.

Blue Man Group reject? Superhero wannabe? I temporarily slipped into an issue of the Sandman or Hellblazer comic books? I have no idea.

35

Leicester Square, London, 1993: We’re enjoying the sights, when we look over and see five or six rather large, hairy men, dressed up in thigh-highs, bustiers, merrywidows, and other assorted lingerie. An interesting sight, but not as weird as…

…State Street, Madison, WI, 1999: I’m walking around the shops when I see a man, dressed in black tights, black leotard, and a pink tutu. He’s mincing about, presumably trying out his new ballet walk. He throws in some jetes for good measure.

36

Which led to the city’s unsuccessful subway ad campaign during the 80s: “New York City - come see our nuts!”

37

well, we have plastic bag man. He walks up and down the highways with a fist full of rolled up hefty bags in one hand, and an unfurled bag in the other. And he just shakes that unfurled bag back and forth, back and forth, back and forth… . I don’t know if it’s the sound he likes, or just what his deal is. But he’s always waving and shaking that trash bag, pacing up and down the road.

38

Just the other day I saw a guy who politely stopped passers-by, and when he had their attention screamed at them “TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY CENTS IS ALL I NEED!!!”, then mimed the action of drinking. I suspect this was how much a can of his favourite tipple cost him.

Also in Dublin there’s a famous woman who sings to cars in the middle of O’Connell Street, but I forget her name.

39

Was he performing “Singin’ in the Rain” with his Droogs nearby? :smiley:

40

That would have taken the situation categrory from “rather amusing” to “run for the hills”. :smiley: