Weirdest person you've ever met

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

There was a wierd guy in the old gaming organization at UC. Well, there were a lot of wierd guys there, so you had to stand out to be thought of as wierd. This guy did, eventually. He was a bit tall, military type build but not excessively so, short hair, neat and groomed all the time. That’s not why he stood out in the gaming group. He was always friendly, but it was odd, like he was trying to be friendly, or following directions on how to be friendly. He smiled a bit too much, or laughed a bit too long, etc. He played all kinds of games and was good enough that no one cared. Until the day he left. One day, he shows up and announces that he’s going away, not coming back, and today was going to be his last day. So he goes around to everyone, from room to room, and starts telling people what he really thinks of them.

‘John I like you, you’re really cool, I still remember that thing you did in the one game with the tanks, but you really need to shave more, a beard doesn’t suit you.’
‘Fred, I just can’t stand you, you’re annoying to talk to, but you’re a good $game player.’

It was really odd, and there was an increasing feeling of ‘OMG hes gonna snap’. And then he walked up to Ray. ‘Ray I like you, you’re a nice guy, but I just can’t stand niggers.’ And then he just walked away. He left a little while after that, and we never saw him again. A lot of people speculated that by ‘going away’ he meant ‘being put away’. But we never knew.

42

There was Cowboy.

I was introduced to Cowboy by a pal of mine, & as Cowboy was a pretty good D&D Gamemaster, I was cool with him at first.

Later, I discovered that he was more or less a pathological liar.

He lied about everything!

His past, others’ pasts, what was on the news the night before, ball game scores. Anything.

Once, we were visiting a classmate at Erlanger Hospital, & rode the bus back to UTC. As we passed a corner, an attractive young woman was standing there, & Cowboy claimed she was a prostitute he had hired once. Just out of the blue.

She was actually my little sister’s pedatrician. :rolleyes: :smack:

43

I met a number of weird people when I first moved out with roomies.

Our next door neighbours, who we met when one of their buddies who was on something (crack I think was mentioned) wandered into our apartment by mistake. This began a couple of years of hanging out, though I would usually keep out of their way thanks to the creepy vibes both gave off. One was fairly harmless, the worst he did was stare at my chest and if I moved he’d giggle and hold his hands in front of his own chest making jiggly motions (he must’ve been about 30 btw, most of the guys I hung out with were 25+ with several 30 or older).

The other one though. He was more or less harmless also, but since he was bigger than me and gave off the most creep vibes I stayed clear where I could and made sure to not be alone with him though I don’t think he would’ve tried anything.

His idea of hitting on women (namely me, since I was usually the only one around) was to brag about his exploits. He’d tell stories of hooking up with people online. Going to parties where the sole purpose was to find women and have sex, or one story he told of being at a party where the woman sitting next to him on the couch got up, tossed up her skirt and proclaimed she wanted every guy there to do her… so he was first in line. I have no idea if any of the stories he told were true or not (I think not), but if even a few of them were I’d be afraid of catching something from him. Thinking on it, some of the stories must’ve been for the benefit of the guys, but he’d look at me as if he was hoping I’d be impressed and have sex with him right there.

One hot summer, he invited us over to his apartment to hang out and everyone took off but it was so hot in our apartment that I was willing to put up with creep for his A/C. He invited me into his room which was the coolest room in the apartment, but I refused and left shortly after. So glad I don’t have to put up with him anymore.

Okay, that was more creepy than weird.

This one was (and probably is still) weird. I call him g-string guy, my step-mom calls him shopping bag man. You see him wandering around downtown Edmonton wearing some eye-blindingly neon outfit that looks somewhat like what professional bike racers wear (think Lance Armstrong) and overtop of it a neon pink polkadot g-string. He’s always walking around and carrying shopping bags of his belongings.

Well this one day, I got to see him up close. I worked downtown at a really cheap outlet store. I mean cheap, you could buy shirts or a week’s worth of underwear for about a buck or little more (though people still stole underwear… but that’s another story). So he comes wandering in one day and I was on clothing detail. I watched him for a little bit as he walked the racks and stops to pick up an outfit.

Specifically, a jumper (one piece short and top outfit, I used to wear them as a kid)in size and colours that make it quite clear to anyone looking that it is meant for a little girl (purple and bright pink).

In the middle of the store, he takes it off the rack and starts to try it on. He didn’t take off his clothes (thank goodness) but he’s got it up to his waist and is trying to get into it as I walk up to him and ask if he would like a change room.

The subtlety was lost on him, and he told me no thanks before he decided it really was too small for him and hung it back up before he left.

44

I had a guy, Vietnam Vet, come in to the grocery store where I worked quite often, and who bought enormous amounts of bird food to feed the birds in his backyard. On the other hand, he apparently shot the cats that would come to get the birds because “cats are evil, sadistic creatures who kill for pleasure”. I just kinda nodded, and said “ok”. One day while I was assisting him with loading his groceries, he showed me the pistol he carried around for self defense (and presumably, nailing cats in his backyard). He told me a story about how one day somebody tried to steal the fanny pack he kept his gun in and he beat them down with his cane and then threatened them with his pistol. I was always kind of on-edge around him after those stories

45

Oh yes, please do.

46

This media sci fi convention I used to go to, had a regular attendee known as “Malvere Jim.” He was generally considered the most extrovert-weird person people knew. And in the media SF community, that says a lot. He just emitted an aura of extreme weirdness, in an outgoing way.

This literary SF convention I’ve been to, had a regular attendee, whom I’ll call Dan. (That’s not his real name, of course.) He was generally considered the most introvert-weird person people knew. In the literary SF community, that says a lot. Dan just emitted an aura of extreme weirdness, in a non-outgoing way.

Then one year, Dan showed up at the convention Malverne Jim was at. A few of us techie types suddenly realized that we should keep Malverne Jim and Dan at least 20 feet apart at all times – we were afraid if the two of them touched, they’d cancel each other out and set off an antimatter explosion.

Yeah, us techie literary-and-media SF fans were pretty weird.

47

This looks like a good place for a taxicab story.

Once upon a time, early in my cabdriver career, I was sitting in the line at the airport. It was a Sunday evening, before the evening rush. I was the second cab in line when the first cab in line came on the CB radio, “I have a lady here that needs to go to Arlington and all she has is a Texaco credit card. She says she can buy a tank of gas in exchange for the fare, but I’ve got full tank. How much gas have you got, Slim?” I was slim in those days.

“I’ve got about half a tank.”

“That would be about right, come on up here.”

I was a young, dumb country kid and not yet so cynical, so I fell for it. I drove up to the door and greeted a young lady about my age in a flower print dress with really thick stockings, like something an elderly lady would wear. She had shaggy sandy blonde hair and my first impression was she looked like a blonde Aly Sheedy. “Not bad,“ the horny young man in me said to himself, “this might be interesting,“

She hopped in the back seat and I asked where she needed to go. She wasn’t quite sure (that should have been my first clue). It was a friends house near downtown Arlington and she knew the street name, I looked it up and sure enough, it was near downtown Arlington in a residential area.

As we were leaving the airport, she started talking. And talking. And talking. Except she wasn’t saying anything. I pulled into a Texaco at Abrams and Collins a filled up. True to her word, she went inside and paid for the fill-up and bought herself a soda.

I proceeded to the street she had named. Fortunately, it was a short street, because she was not certain which house it was. Suddenly, a house we had already passed was certainly it. She said, “Wait here, I’ll be right back.”

She went inside and came back out in about five minutes. “I need to get a prescription filled. Can you take me to a drug store and then back to the airport?”

Well, it was after 9:00 on Sunday night and the only 24-hour drug store I knew of was in Irving, Reluctantly, because that meant I was losing money on this deal, I agreed.

Off to Irving. She started talking again. She kept repeating the phrase “doing sports”. She seemed really worried about the prescription. The store in Irving only had one prescription. She tells me that they assured her that the Eckerds on Forest Lane in Dallas. Except, that’s the opposite direction from the airport and they close at 10:00. I drive like a madman because it’s obvious she’s going to freak if she doesn’t get that prescription filled. We make it with just minutes to spare.

Exiting the second drug store, “Okay, you can take me back to the airport now.”

So, I did. She was talking all the way. When we entered the airport, I asked which airline and which to city she was headed. This was how you determined which terminal to go to in those days.

“American, to Chicago.”

Now we have a big problem. I knew that last flight to Chicago left around 10:00, so I told her this as we pulled up to the terminal door.

“Wait here and I’ll go check,” she says.

I had long since given making any money that night. “You don’t have any money for a hotel, do you?”

“No, what am I going to do?”

Like I said, I was a young, dumb country kid. I was very aware that this young lady was a few bricks shy of full load, which had suppressed the horny young man in me. “You can spend the night at my place. But, I have to get up early in the morning to come back out here and make some money before I go to school.”

“That would be great. That’s so nice of you.”

Off we went, back to Arlington. She’s still talking 90 mph. When we got to my apartment, I offered to let her take a shower, which she declined, and offered her the bed. She chose the couch instead, so I got out my sleeping bag. She noticed some trophies I had from high school basketball and exclaimed, “Good, you do sports, too!“ She kicked off her shoes and climbed into the bag and passed out like someone turned off a switch.

I had homework to do, so I stayed up for another hour or so before I crashed. I got up at 6:00, took a shower, got dressed and proceeded to try to wake her up. I really needed to get out to the airport early to make up for the money I’d lost the night before and I had classes that afternoon. I shook her, sat her up, shook her some more. She moaned and whined, “I’m so tired, I did sports all night.” Finally, like a light switch, she opened her eyes, put on her shoes, and she was ready to go. Talking 90 mph again and not saying a thing coherent.

I drove directory to the Chicago departure gate and she hopped out, thanked me, and went on her way.

A week or so later, I’m relaying this story to some other drivers while we were waiting at the airport. I just got started on the story when another driver interrupted me, “Was she about 20, dirty blonde hair, her name was xxx ?“ (I don’t remember it now).

“Yea, that’s her,” I replied.

“Just the other day, a truck driver came on the CB when I was headed to the airport on 635. He asked if there were any cab drivers out there looking for fare. He was pulled over on the side of the road, so I pull in behind him. This gal got out of the truck and asked to go to the Chicago gate. I took her into the airport, she went in and came out with a ziplock bag full of money and asked me to take her back to the truck. I did and she climbed back into the truck and they drove off.”

We never did come up with a good explanation for all of this.

I have other stories, but I can’t get by on 4 hours of sleep like I could in those days.

48

Are we breaking this down by People I Saw, People I Knew, People I Dated, or People Who Lived With Me?

49

Afraid I don’t have a story quite as good as these, but my story is about someone who wasn’t so weird, but instead, a complete surprise.

Many years ago, I worked in a government office as a file clerk. One of the other file clerks was the kind of person you didn’t give much thought to–he was originally from Calcutta, India, but really nondescript in all ways. Probably was in his 50s when I worked with him. I’ll call him “Ronny.”

Well, since I worked with him, I got to know Ronny. He was a pleasant enough fellow, always ready to spend coffee breaks talking about the weather, current events, or whatever passed by the window of the break room. Then one day, I mentioned that I liked listening to jazz.

Ronny’s eyes brightened. “What kind?”

I had been to a Dixieland jazz concert a night or two before, so I said “Dixieland.”

That was the magic word. Ronny leaned across the break room table and said, “You want to hear some good Dixieland? Be at Such-and-such a club Thursday night. The Whatzitsname Band is playing.”

“Are they good?”

“‘Are they good?’ Of course they are! Because,” he leaned even closer, “I’m their piano player!”

Huh? Ronny, from Calcutta, could play southern American Dixieland? Seriously? No joke?

To make a long story short, it was no joke. I went to the jazz club, and Ronny was indeed playing the piano for the band. And beautifully too–he handled his solos just as well as you’d expect from a professional musician. But I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised–he was a professional musician, and had been one for years.

It turned out that as a child in Calcutta, Ronny’s parents had made him learn classical violin. He hated that. He wanted to play the American jazz he heard on the radio. But he kept up with violin because it was training him musically, in scales and arpeggios and keys and everything he would need to know instantly if he was to play jazz. Later, as a young adult, he took piano lessons, with the goal of being able to play Dixieland jazz on a keyboard. And he achieved his goal. He worked at the government office because it was nice, steady work, and would never involve overtime, since he had to get to whatever club the band was at that night. His real job was his real love: Dixieland music.

He swore me to secrecy at the office because he didn’t want any of the others to know of his secret life. Fair enough; I kept my word. But it always struck me as odd that the person our co-workers saw as an unassuming little file clerk originally from Calcutta was actually one of the jazz piano giants in the nightclubs of our city. I’m glad he let me know; I heard some terrific Dixieland jazz in the time I knew him.

50

I have met many weird people and continue to do so. But the CREEPIEST person I ever met was a friend’s rommate back in Texas. The friend asked me to help him move out. He was moving out because this roommate, whom I’d not actually met before, was too strange, and he was afraid of trouble upon the roommate seeing him taking his stuff and leaving. My friend wanted someone else there. So I went with him, and the roommate seemed okay with the move, was calm and not excited.

Years later, the roomate made the news. He had gotten married since that time, and his wife was found in the backyard garden, where he had buried her after murdering her.