Anyone ever had run ins with/knew people that made you want to run as far as you can in the opposite direction? Not because they are annoying, but because they set off warning bells in your head, even if they did nothing outwardly creepy.
I’ve had the “pleasure” of knowing three such individuals. Two men and a woman.
The first was my freshman history teacher. He was middle aged and wore glasses with a string/band on them, like these. He liked to rest his hand on students shoulders, male and female, when answering questions about worksheets. Heard a rumor that he may have gotten in trouble for touching girls, no idea how true it is.
Second was a lady who taught riding lessons. She was an older woman (50-70s) and her barn was out in the middle of nowhere. The lessons were just me and her, no other people and I never saw another person there the three times I went. She had this obsession with braiding horses manes and telling me about how great Arabian horses were at endurance riding (her barn was papered with pics of her and her horses, almost like a shrine).
Third was another middle aged man, this one a Drivers Ed teacher. While he wasn’t as loony as the other instructor there that required each student to but a seat belt on the back seat tissue box, he just had this “vibe” that made several people uneasy. He was from somewhere in the Mediterranean and being stuck in the confined space of a car with him was pure torture. He never did anything inappropriate, just something about him made it hard to concentrate on the road. No one, male or female, could figure out what it was.
In high school I used to have a friend who had dead eyes. She was perfectly nice but there was just this lack of … any intelligence or life in her eyes. Hard to explain.
A few years ago I knew someone who got a new boss. I thought the boss was super creepy. He was one of those people who never blinked so he had a cold hard stare all the time. He also never, ever smiled so he came off like a real hard-ass in even the most mundane situations. I was glad I didn’t have to work for him and felt bad for my friend.
I interact minimally with a neighbor who lives in a rental across the street. She used to chain smoke on my property and leave the cigarette butts there, park in my spot which I never had to compete for in the past decade of living here, sit on her doorstep most of the day including 4 AM in the morning and watch me as I walked to and from my car like I’m her entertainment (get a TV set, why don’t you?). She always wears pajamas and even her work clothes resemble pajamas. She looks like Bette Midler. She has three past boyfriends show up some at the same time. One of them would cry and plead at her door until the police arrived after she broke up with him, but then she would get back together with him, rinse and repeat. I guess I could go on, but I’ll stop here.
My former neighbors were a quiet young couple who I only saw when they came and went from work and when they moved.
When I was a kid in the '50s, our next-door neighbors had an ancient garage behind the house. Although the house itself was nice, the garage was like a shack out of 1930s Appalachia. The elderly grandmother lived in the garage. She was a filthy, ornery woman with no teeth, whose only companion was an old tom cat. She would hunt down any kittens in the neighborhood (probably the result of her cat not being altered), and drown them. The neighborhood kids were all sure she was a witch, and would run and scream when we saw her.
I also had an uncle who was missing the first joint of his index finger. He liked to tease all the little kids and tickle us with that finger. Creeped me the hell out.
Later, when I was in college, there was a creepy girl who was always on the periphery of the group I was in. She wasn’t anyone’s friend, never participated in any conversations, never laughed along with everyone else . . . but was somehow always *there. *Then one day we noticed that she wasn’t there any more. It turned out, she’d been brutally murdered. The killer, or the motive, were never discovered.
There was one time when I was walking my dogs and we veered in a wide circle around this guy who was walking down the same street. You have to understand that my dogs are total social butterflies; if I took them into a crowd of people unleashed, they’d walk up to each and every person to sniff their hands and say “HiWhoAreYouDoYouThinkI’mPretty?YouHaveAnySnacks?”. So that day when they took one look at that guy, backed up slightly and started to circle away/around him, I let them guide us safely around him. No idea what his story was, but I always listen to my critters. They know things I don’t.
When I saw the title of this thread I immediately thought of a business partner that a friend of mine had long ago. This guy was sort of moderately nerdy, and his manner was friendly, but it was so incredibly stiff and artificial that I felt that the real person was living completely concealed inside this impervious façade that he had constructed… it was as if what I was interacting with was this sort of robot that his brain was controlling. I thought he seemed like the type of person who would snap like a twig at some point. He ended up pulling some kind of underhanded crap on my friend, who was fortunately able to rid himself of the guy.
I don’t mean to refer to you personally, but I find this “If animals don’t like someone, then he/she must be a criminal or a horrible person” notion in America to be rather pseudoscience and almost like a form of bigotry through ignorance.
Again, not criticizing you directly or singling it out. But this is an attitude I find troublesome, from a rationalizing-judgement-of-other-people standpoint.
The DE guy in our high school was also the football coach, and he made it quite clear that he was only doing the driving instruction for a little side money.
He was the largest human I had ever seen (up to that time). I’d bet he weighed over 600 pounds; to fit in the Ford Fiesta he took out the front passenger seat and sat in the backseat.
While his ginormity was kind of creepy, what was really weird is that he’d have students drive to his house, have them park in the driveway, and disappear inside for up to two hours at a time. We’d just sit in the driveway, waiting for him to finish his lunch/nap/other things I don’t want to think about.
Middle school algebra teacher. Very “handsy”, especially with the girls.
Got canned some years ago when they found kiddie porn on his work computer. He tried working at a local retail store until it was “suggested” he move elsewhere.
Met a friend’s coworker and had the same reaction. Didn’t help that he responded to my mentioning a local bar with “That’s interesting. And are there other places in this area where one would get a drink that are also good?”
Said he was from Illinois, native English speaker. Might have been on the spectrum, but nothing that’d account for the robot facade. We chalked it up to Low Socialization, and invited him to a few “local establishments where the serving of beverages occurs”. We’d wonder afterwards about his “How To Speak To Earthlings” book.
High School teacher. Very large, not well groomed man in his 50’s, still lived in his mother’s basement in our small outlying suburb. “Ewwww” was probably a universal comment or thought regarding him.
Was a huge jerk to my older sister. Was a huge jerk to me because he remembered her.
Once he lectured in front of the class with this immense blob of mucus hanging out of his nostrils. The entire freaking hour. <shudder>
Then my younger sister, the rock star of the family, got in his class and he started picking on her. That was quite enough for my parents and they intervened at the school and got her out of his class.
A touchy-feely couple I run into now and then at the bar, usually not together. He will walk up and tell me I look tense and begin massaging my shoulders, which makes me tense. She will put a hand on my arm and just stroke my arm while asking me a question, or just chatting.
My gf says they do the same kinds of things with her.
They also use a lot of coke; probably the only people I know now who still do it. He’ll come out of the men’s room clearing his throat, looking like he just ate a powdered doughnut.
