Things are not what they seem -- Really!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So one day, I pulled over and abandoned a dog in a parking lot…

Ever find yourself in a situation that you know just looks horribly wrong?

The full story…

My then-girlfriend had to take a Big Thing to the university as part of a thesis presentation. So I offered to drive her. We pulled up by the loading doors of the English building next to a small, Faculty-Parking-ONLY lot.

Heave! Ho! Got the Big Thing out of the car, my then GF dragged it away while I kept an eye out for campus security (who’d love to ticket me). There was a big, yellow, lab bouncing around chasing squirrels. I’d seen it around before and knew it belonged to a professor* and that it never wandered off.

My GF returned and I opened the door to leave – POUNCE! Big yellow lab lept into the front seat and climbed in to the backseat. It was smiling ear-to-ear with that big, dumb, doggy look of slobbery glee that says “Wheeee! We’re going for a ride! We’re going for a ride! Oh, goody! Oh, goody! Oh, goody!”

“Uh… Bad dog. Out! Out!” I commanded.

Nope, doggy wouldn’t budge. No dog-owner could be seen, but we knew he had to be nearby. The dog was a campus regular.

We waited awhile but the prof didn’t appear… Still didn’t appear… Still didn’t appear… Okay, we were going to be late for stuff.

I didn’t really want to wrestle with a strange dog. Physically struggling with a strange animal? Risk being bitten? No way! But the big oaf would not get out of my car. What to do? What to do?

“Well… give him a ride then,” said my GF.

I started the engine, tried my best not to look like a dognapper, and did two quick donuts right there – “Wheeeeeee!”.

I stopped, opened the door, and the satsified dog bounded out of the car. Quickly, I slammed the car door, and off we went – Success! As we drove out of sight, the lab was peering through the windows of the Faculty-Parking-ONLY lot doors to see if the prof was coming out yet.

Then later we thought: “Geez, there were a lot of passers-by who surely only caught the last, little bit of that scene! We probably look like vile bastards who abandoned a beautiful dog!”

Surely that must have been what it looked like. I wonder how many dirty looks we got that day? Or if anyone reported us to the police or Human Society?
*I found out later that the dog belonged to one of MY profs.

2

I don’t know where you live, but in my city the main problem police cite in inability to solve homicides is that witnesses refuse to come forward.
It would have to be a pretty small town for someone to care, and if it were that small they probably would notice, as you did, that the dog was used to being there.

3

Wouldn’t the Inhuman Society be more appropriate? :wink:
Seriously, I’ve done something that left me wondering what bystanders thought of me. I broke into a car and drove off with it. It was my car, mind you, but still, I used a coat hanger to get into the car, and then drove off.

4

Beg pardon, I typoed. That was supposed to the “Big Goofy Dog Society”. The “Human Society” is what comes to rescue me when some idiot has locked me in a car on a hot day, which makes my crayons all melty.

Actually, what was really disturbing is one day for revenge for a prank (a classmate had crazy-glued raw eggs to our drafting tables), we took the wheels off his car which was illegally parked in the Faculty-Parking-ONLY lot. We put his car up on concrete blocks then dragged his wheels into the studio.

No one called security, no one even batted an eye. We could have stripped his car and sold the parts! Eventually security did come by while on their usual rounds – didn’t even ask us what the hell we were doing. We just waved “hello” and of they went.

5

Thanks for the best laugh I’ve had all day. As a dog owner, this really really cracked me up.

6

Well, it’s big enough that they wouldn’t notice the dog was there often (people IN that particular building would know, but it was a little unusual for the dog to be waiting outside).

It’s also the kind of thing where passersby would probably get thoroughly disgusted and say “Tsk! What assholes! Somebody should do something about that!” and yet not be bothered to call and report it themselves. :rolleyes:

7

A big store went out of business and they were selling their carts for $5. My friend and I bought one and then were harassed by a guy in a pickup when we were trying to fit it in the back of a station wagon. He accused us of stealing. We were only 16, so we were actually rather intimidated by him.

8

I lived in a roach-infested apartment in college. On one of my trips to the grocery store, I decided it was time to Do Something about this.

I also came up with a totally unrelated plan to make spaghetti with tomato sauce for dinner.

When I got to the grocery store, I couldn’t find the tomato sauce or the roach spray. I saw an employee, and asked “Where is the tomato sauce?” She led me to it, as they do these days.

When she asked, “Is there anything else?” I said, “Yeah, where’s the roach spray?” I realized as I was saying it that she might have thought I was going to put the roach spray in the tomato sauce to poison somebody :eek:

9

This one happened when I moved to another office at work.

The system admin was helping me set up my computer in my new office. He had a mouse from somebody else’s system that looked nicer than mine. I asked if I could have it, and he said yes.

When we booted up the computer, it was clear that the new mouse didn’t work. So we unplugged it and put the old one back on the machine. It worked perfectly, and the system admin went on his way to install more computers.

I realized I didn’t have a trash can in my new office. So I took the mouse out of my office, to the secretary’s cubicle, and dumped it in her trash can. She looked up as I did this, and I said “Dead mouse.”

Her eyes got as big as saucers. I managed to stammer out, “No, no, it’s a computer mouse” before the screaming could start, at least. Computer geek that I am, I automatically think “computer mouse” when I say the word “mouse”…

10

Once upon a time I used to be in a children’s choir, and one performance our choir director decided to do a dance-skit number with our song–a reprise of some of the songs from Oliver.

We had a fifteen-year-old girl dress up: a bowler hat tilted dangerously to one side, a loosened tie, her hair messed up and her face smeared with soot–a poor old drunk, wobbling across the stage, singing loudly in a Cockney accent while waving her (empty) bottle around. It was great–everyone split their sides as she slumped all over our choir director (a very prim, proper old English lady) and slurred her words, pretending to sloppily kiss the pianist (another prim, proper old English lady) at the end.

The night of the performance, she stashed her bottle, hat, and tie near the doors while we all sat and rehearsed. One of the parent chaperones came along, cleaning up the remains of our box lunches; she spotted the bottle and immediately recoiled in horror–one of the choristers had a drinking problem… a whole empty bottle of *whiskey! *

She was absolutely distraught, the choir director couldn’t stop laughing, and nobody quit teasing the fifteen-year-old for the entire year about being an alcoholic. :slight_smile:

11

Ardred and I do this on purpose sometimes. We often go to get single items late at night. When we get something like, for example, condoms and chocolate syrup, which could be construed to mean kinky happenings (when it actually was a trip for syrup and I remembered we were out of condoms when we got to the store) we pick up something else totally incongruous like, say, medicated foot powder. Then we giggle and nod salaciously at the cashier.

12

Some friends of mine are part of the crew for my school’s musical. Being crew members, they wear all black while working, so it’s harder to see them if they need to run around in the darkness of the theater to fix things.

There was formal suit-and-tie party before one of the performances a few years ago. So formal, in fact, that the director asked them to leave the building. So after sneeking out some food in brown paper bags, they went outside and sat down on the curb. They talked and laughed loudly, sharing various funny stories as these guys often do.

So when a rich, important man walked to the door, and saw five guys dressed in black with brown paper bags laughing like idiots, it’s only natural that he stopped, walked back to his expensive car, and made sure it was locked.

13

Atwood Center on the campus of the local university houses the cafeteria, copy shop, coffee shop, art gallery, bank…all that little stuff. It also has a ballroom, a theatre, and several very large lounge areas. VERY large lounge areas which at one time were covered with very large, very unattached carpets.

Years ago a group of college students started moving the furniture off the rug. They even got some people hanging out in the lounge area to help them move the piano out of the way. They rolled up the carpet, carried it away, and it was never seen again.

Except by my aunt, at an off-campus party.

14

It was twelve years ago and I was with a hiking group that charters a bus and takes you out of the DC metro area into the Blue Ridge on a Sunday.

One day while walking along the trail (and I was towards the front of the group), the lady in front suddenly stops and announces to no one in particular, “Oh, there’s a snake!” She turns around, and not more than two feet away to the left of my feet is a nine inch Eastern Diamondback. Since it wasn’t coiled at that moment and I could make a fast evac should the need arise, I stopped to look at it. About that time, three other people on the trail came up and asked where it was, and the lady and I pointed it out.

Then somebody leading the main group, which was about, twenty yards away cried out, “Don’t kill it!” “What? Who said anything about killing the snake?” I thought to myself. Mob psychology took over at that point and hostile cries of “don’t kill the snake,” and “Hey you! Get away from that snake!” started being directed at us. I wasn’t concerned until some alpha male walked up to me and said to me “Move along.” in a way that suggested that if we were just the two of us, he’d kick my a**. :mad:

I try to explain to him, that I had no intention of hurting the snake, but he curtly cut me off by saying that I was holding up the group and to move along. Remarkably, as I turned to ask the four women to speak up for me, they had silently moved away to avoid any being tainted as snake killer coconspirator. :smack:

For the rest of the hike, I noticed everybody was pretty distant from me (Pol Pot is My Co-Pilot kind of coolness). I hiked a few more times with the group (and I didn’t sense any animosity after that hike, probably as a result of a constant turnover of hikers), but after that experience, I never really enjoyed hiking with large groups again.

While taking a break hiking in Sierra Nevada a couple of years later, I told my eloquent, if somewhat laconic friend about the fore mentioned experience. He thought about it for a moment and said just one word: “PETAphiles.”

15

:eek: Dude, that’s weird. Maybe you just looked like the kind of kid who’d pull the wings off flies…

Heh, heh… please don’t hurt me.