True life surreal stories

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
141

Anyone who lives in New York has their share of surreal subway stories what with all the wackies we’ve got, but I’ll share my humble story all the same.

It was my roommate’s birthday, and we were each holding a bouquet she had received as we rode the subway home. One bouquet had a rather large explosion of balloons, which made it very difficult for us to see where we were going. Luckily, the train was not very crowded, and we were able to find seats. We plopped down with the bouquets on our laps, the balloons basically obscuring our upper bodies and faces from view.

Then, the sobbing began.

She and I looked at each other behind our balloon curtain, and shrugged it off. As I said, lots of crazies on the subway. The sobbing continued, and then my roommate made a face and said, “Do you smell pee?” I sure did, and then we heard a demented voice scream, “Baaaah-loooooooon!” inbetween sobs. We cautiously parted the balloon sea to behold a truly ginormous homeless woman, approximately six and half feet tall, wearing a tattered leopard fur coat. Oh, and she had just pissed herself. She was standing over us, crying and gnashing, and screaming, “Baaaah-loooooooon! Baaah-loooon, f*ckers,” over and over. At this point, I was beginning to freak out, and said, “Dude, Meg, just give her a damn balloon.” While Meg was untying a balloon to appease crazy pee lady, our train came to a stop at the next station, and in walked…

wait for it…

a midget.

He looked about in his mid-thirties, and sat on the bench across from us. Crazy lady immediately stopped sobbing, reached out her tremendous arms to the poor guy, and screamed, “Baaaay-beeeee!” He looked quite confused, but that quickly became a countenance of sheer terror when he realized that she was coming towards him, and intended to coddle him. So, I suppose what he did next was what any self-respecting person would do in such a situation… he ran. Crazy lady took a moment to figure out that he was running away, and took off after him (we are still on the subway train, ladies and gents), screaming, “Baaaay-beee! Come back, baaaybeee, you f*cker!”

Luckily, the next stop was ours, and we made ourselves scarce.
I sure hope he escaped.

142

OMG Lizochka!!! That was the best story yet. I hadn’t even thought about the subway stories. There are too many of them to tell really. Poor little man, I hope he escaped as well.

143

My whole life is one surreal moment. Surreality, if you will…

144

Glad you liked it, dorkus. I have many many subway stories, but that one is always a hit at parties. Especially when I stand up and do the hulking, sobbing crazy lady impression.

145

hedra-it sounds like Gabe has “the Shining”…

:wink:

146

This one suggests that not all European visitors to America are always & automatically sophisticated people.

She sure wasn’t.

I was living in Florida, tourist country.

I was waiting in line at Krogers.

An attractive, but rather tall blonde woman came up to the register behind me, & put her stuff on the counter. We smiled at each other, & waited.

A man came up to the counter with a cart full of groceries, & started dumping a huge load onto the counter, & also onto the lady’s purchases (sp?).

She asked me, in a strong accent (Scandinavian? Eastern European? I dunno), what could be done about keeping the man from getting his stuff mixed with hers.

I didn’t say a word, just smiled & handed her the plastic/hard rubber divider thingy that you put down between orders to keep them separate.

She looked at it in a puzzled way, a confused expression on her rather attractive face, & then a look of sudden understanding crossed her face.

“Ah, you Americans are so clever!” she said.

And then began whacking the cart guy with it, saying “Kepp dott stuff back! Pick it up!”

I did not ask her out after all.

Then there was the time in October of 1983, a warm Sunday afternoon. Truly a golden fall day, with sunligt streaming through the multicolored leaves.

A girl walked towards me across the nearly-deserted campus.

She was carrying a red, hairy rug in her arms.

We got closer.

No, it was a huge, red hairy teddy bear.

We got within 10 feet.

It was a live, baby orangutan. :eek:

Made my day…

147

Oh Christ, that’s got to be the funniest thing I’ve read this week.

OK, surreal weather story. It was a year or so ago, mid-winter. Really late at night, and it had been snowing for several hours. I’m woken from a deep sleep by a flash and a loud rumble. Thinking a transformer has blown or something, I look at the alarm clock - nope, still on - and get up to look out the window. Outside it’s still snowing - the kind where there’s no wind or anything, just the snow, and it muffles all the sounds outside so the world is extra quiet.

Then the lightning struck, followed by an ungodly peal of thunder.

Then it was extra quiet again.

148

I remember something that happened to me a few years ago. While walking home from a quick 7-11 run, I saw my brother and his friend Scott at the nearest street corner to the house. When I’d left, they had been inside the house playing video games, so I thought: “They probably wanted to get some fresh air… no worries.” I waved at them, and was home not too long after.

Imagine my surprise when I saw Jon and Scott, calmly playing some video game as if they hadn’t been just outside a few minutes ago. I told the guys that I’d just seen them outside… they looked at me like I was from another planet. Finally, they convinced me that they’d been home all afternoon, and that I had been seeing things.

I don’t know if I was, though… the people I saw looked exactly like Jon and Scott, even down to the clothes they were wearing when I left the house!

F_X

149

I was driving home once and on a road near my house I spotted a woman walking along the side of the road. Now at the time there was no sidewalk on that side, and the road ran along an orchard. She apperaed to be walking two dogs. “Those are pretty big dogs” I thought. Then went I went past I saw what they were.

They were bears. Two big brown bears, leashed with chains and being calmly escorted by a diminutive woman :eek:

150

This doesn’t compare to the experiences of others by a long shot, but here’s mine.

Experience #1:

I work at a Sears store in the St. Louis area. The Christmas before last, I was working the counter in the men’s wear section. I was ringing out a long line of customers as quickly and efficiently as possible when an older woman carrying a little pug dog came in from the parking lot. She walked up to my regisiter where I was already ringing out a customer, plopped down her dog right on the counter, and said to me, “You know how you can make more money? Put a dog in your commercials!”

I looked at the dog, which had a St. Louis Rams bandana tied around its neck, looked at the woman, then smiled as politely as I could and mumbled something to the effect of, “Yes, that’s a good idea, I’ll tell my manager.”

The woman smiled in apparent satisfaction, picked up her dog, and left without another word. I blinked a few times and looked at the customer I had been ringing out. We shared a “WTF?” moment, then I went back to work. It was weird.

Experience #2:

In the same section of the store last August, there was a trail of human feces leading from the fragrance department and down the main aisle towards men’s wear. It looked like someone had dropped their pants, hunkered down and taken a poop, crab-walked a few feet and taken a dump again, several times in a curving path. Some of the employees speculated that it came from a seeing-eye dog, but one had been seen in the store that day. The strange thing was, this was a crowded store, and no one had seen the perp do his or her evil deed. How could you miss something like that?

151

My husband and I have lived in the same house for almost two years now. The house directly across the street from us has been vacant and on the market since August. Early last week, the realtor put up the “sold” sign. By Friday, they had a crew out there tearing of the old shingles and putting on a new roof.

Wednesday evening, around 6:30, I walk out to my car and hear someone call my name.

It was my ex-boyfriend from three and a half years ago!! He had been out of work for a couple of months (no surprise there), and jumped at the chance when his cousin’s boss said he needed some extra help for this roofing job. Across the street from ME!!!

Maybe not surreal, but DAMN!!

152

I just got back to lunch…it seems most of my surreal stories deal with lunchtime but it is a busy tourist area so I get to see a lot. Anyway, I saw a real life pinhead. I had never seen someone with that particular affliction of micro-encephalecy(sp?) and it was quite odd. His head was definately bigger around than a softball but only because there was a chin attached. :eek: I was polite and didn’t stare but damn, I really wanted to. I felt like a rube at a circus sideshow.

153

beija already told that story…:slight_smile:

But as long as we’re in that mode, I’ll tell about someone I saw in downtown Cleveland in 1990.

Tall man with generic clothes like jeans and a windbreaker, and a driving cap. Skeletally thin, face very gaunt. Skin pure, snow white, and on the left side of his face, about the size, shape and positioning of one of Wolverine’s sideburns, a coal black growth. I mean, it was about a half-inch thick, roughly two inches wide by six inches long, and stuck to this paper-thin skin.

Stage Four melanoma, maybe?

154

Okay, I have a few to share…

I was on my way to an SCA event (medieval re-enactment), driving my old Dodge van down this long, deserted country road. The event was being held at a friends’ house WAY out in the country. Anyway, as I am driving along, I see this brand new Ford pickup UPSIDE DOWN in a field. My first thought was “Bummer, the guy is probably unhappy about rolling his truck” when I noticed that the tires were still turning. OH CRAP.

So I ran my van out into the field, hopped out to find a 16 year old kid that was halfway out of the windshield, torn up. So, having been a Corpsman in the Navy, I took care of him, gingerly placing him out of harms’ way, and tend to his injuries. He is bleeding profusely from several places, and has a huge chunk out of his arm. So I dig through the van, and found the only piece of clean cloth that I could use to bandage him with. My favorite T-shirt, black with a picture of Einstein on it, and the caption “It’s all Relative”.

So I say goodbye to my favorite T, and tear it up for bandages.

The surreal part: Two weeks later, I am doing laundry. I pulled the final load out of the dryer, when I notice a shirt. Black. I think to myself “That’s odd, I don’t own any black T-shirts”. It is inside out, so I correct that to find Einstein staring at me, saying “It’s all Relative”.

O

155

Props to beija. Damn that was odd though.

I have been teaching some friends to sing harmony for the last month or so. It is slow going but that is ok. Anyway, one day we were practicing at a friend’s house and his lesbian sister and her lover show up. They are quite nice people and very attractive/intelligent etc. We talk for a while and then they leave.

I didn’t think much about it other than thinking that they were nice. Well, I found out last night (Sunday) that they started calling me the “Sperm Donor” because they think I would give them good babies. They showed up again last night and the friend whose house we were rehearsing in says, the “sperm donor’s” here and they shriek like school girls (they are in their mid 40’s) and rush in.

They talk for a while and then start teasing me. They both say they should have brought a cup and a turkey baster and they both laugh wickedly. The weird part was that it wasn’t uncomfortable at all. In fact it was fairly enjoyable though the entire situation was very odd.

156

This reminded me of a time I was walking through my hometown during my Junior year of highschool. It was the last day of school, the first week in June. I was walking to the local Subway to get some food when for no real reason I stopped and looked around. The street was deserted, there was no traffic, there were no sounds except one. The church bells were ringing out a melody, I don’t really remember what. That was the only sound. I still get the creeps every time I hear churchs bells playing a song.

(I hadn’t yet heard of the term “rapture” yet, but I could imagine it would be something like that. I myself prefer the pagan way.)

Another story comes to mind… I was in basic training in FLW, MO. One day we were doing our linen turn in at the same time we turned our M-16s in. We were standing in a single file line, with one bedsheet draped over each shoulder and the weapon in our right hand. It was pretty close to dusk. The light had an odd musty golden quality to it, any other description defies me.

Our arms room was one of the closest to the parade ground and on this particular day, a company was performing a change of command ceremony. During the ceremony, there was a steady bas drum beating, and that was the only sound. Just the thump…thump…thumpthumpthump…thump…thump…

It was very odd, and strangely disconcerting. I imagine religious militant suicide cults go through the same thing right before they drink Jonestown Koolaide.

157

I was once driving through the by-way of a gravel road in the center of the Tasmanian mountains, when I saw a gas station with the words “Welcome to Central Tasmania” in my native Persian language. I know that’s more coincidental than surreal, but it was just such a remote place. The chances of finding two Iranians who don’t know wach other 16,000 km away from Iran or LA in the middle of a deeply wooded mountain range are truly miniscule.

158

Once, while under the influence of salvia divinorum (a legal hallucinogen), nitrous oxide (a kind-of-legal dissociative), and cannabis, everything in the room I was in appeared to ripple in large blue waves…I lived hundreds of thousands of lifetimes, garnering worldly knowledge during each one…it was as if I lived all of those lifetimes, experiencing every thing that happened to each one from birth to death (in reality it was probably about 20 minutes).

That was quite surreal.

(Note: Cannabis and nitrous oxide are illegal drugs here in California.)

159

Oh, here’s another one: I was in Fresno, about 14 or 15 years old probably, and my mom and I went into a Burger King. I made my order, took my soda cup…and walked away, totally forgetting to pay. (Being in my early teens at the time, I was used to ordering with my parents and letting them pay most of the time…still don’t know why I forgot to pay, though. And no, I wasn’t on any drugs or anything.)

Anyway, the girl behind the counter said something to the effect of “Um, you’re gonna have to pay for that.” I was totally embarrassed, and tried to mutter some gibberish about being used to my parents paying, or whatever. I paid, and slinked away even more embarrassed than before.

I told my mom about it, and she said, “I’m sure it’s fine; you’ll probably never have to see her again.”

Surreal part: So we go back home to San Diego. A few months later, we’re at a San Diego Padres (baseball) game and I go to the refreshment stand to get ice cream…and there she is! The same girl who had worked at the Burger King in Fresno. We exchanged horrified looks, and I shuffled away and bought ice cream at another refreshment stand, so as to avoid further embarrassment.

160

my most surreal experience was when i was sleeping one night… and i was alone at home… i think it was around 2 am… and all of a sudden… the light flicks on… stays on about 1 second and flicks off… i would understand if it was some power surge or something like that… but heres the kicker… i heard the light switch flick on and off…

after that my heart didnt race… it went mach 5