There is a house a few blocks away from us where you can see a phone booth sticking up from behind the corner of their privacy fence. Seriously, every time I see it, I think “WTF are they doing with a phone booth in the back yard?”
A little while back I was waiting at a bus stop when one of the other passengers-to-be suddenly exclaimed, “What is that guy doing?” I followed her gaze and saw a car stopped in the road. The driver had opened his door and reached down to place a glass bottle (very neatly, right-side up) at the beginning of the white line where the single lane split into a left-turn lane and a straight lane. I’d turned in time to see him pull his hand back and drive off. Even odder, as I noticed after the driver was gone – it was a beer bottle, about two-thirds full. He was drinking and driving and had a change of heart? Or what?
Another recent incident happened as I was walking up to my friend’s apartment building one morning a few weeks ago. She lives in Minneapolis, in a neighborhood that is not remotely rural. I happened to glance in the front yard of the building next to hers and saw a pair of live chickens! I’ve never seen them before or since.
I have had so many WTF moments at my house that they all seem normal now.
I was sitting outside talking on the phone one night. Nothing really weird, I live in a pretty nice neighborhood. Some guy randomly walking down the street. I’m sitting near my truck. Guy walks past me, says “Hey,what’s up” and looks like he’s going to keep going. Then he stops and goes “Do you need any weed?” “No.” “Okay cool.”
Keeps walking.
-foxy
Apparently I was the weirdo once. I like to take my cats outside on leashes sometimes. They enjoy playing in the grass and sniffing the air and pouncing on bugs and all that. So one early morning, about 2 a.m., I’m sitting outside with George on his leash, and there was a car full of teenage kids parked in front of my apartment building. Suddenly, I hear one of them yell, “oh my GOD! That girl has a CAT on a LEASH!”
I didn’t think it was THAT weird…
Every morning on my drive to work I pass a house in one of those neighborhoods where all the houses look about the same (except that one with the midnight blue/black border paint job that just looks so cool), and one of the houses has a large, pink piece of cardboard or something blocking out the big bay window. And every morning I catch it out of the corner of my eye and do a double take and wonder what they heck it’s there for.
The complex I live in has specific areas dedicated as dog walking areas, generally consisting of a 20’x15’ stretch of grass along the fence the keeps all the weirdos out. They even have a little station with bags and a trash can so you can clean up after your pet and toss the result of the walk. The other day I was letting my dog sniff around as he’s wont to do, and noticed he was taking an interest in one area in particular. No big deal I thought, he’s a hound, he lives to sniff. As it was beginning to rain, I gave his leash a gentle tug to move him along before we got soaked and I noticed what it was he was sniffing at. As you might have guessed, it was poop someone hadn’t cleaned up. But it wasn’t dog poop. It was human.
And my first thought was, “WTF?! The baggies and trash are right there!”
The day before yesterday I was coming back from the bank and found a man lying on the sidewalk. His eyes were closed, but he was responsive, if dazed. He said he couldn’t get up because he weighed 400 pounds. No WTF for that-- but a huge WTF for everybody who was studiously pretending he didn’t exist. Half-a-dozen people waiting for the bus about seven feet away – a shopkeeper standing at his door who acknowledged the man’s existence by scowling – people going from A to B and stepping around him.
I called an ambulance and held it together while I waited for the few minutes it took for them to show up. The guy was diabetic but wasn’t sure how his blood sugar was. He was also wearing a nitroglycerin patch for his heart. He was on his way to a doctor’s appointment and just went over.
Anyway, I’m pretty sure I know the score: He was native, so everyone was just ignoring the “dirty drunk.”
I think my emotional stress level was pretty far up there from watching CNN constantly for the past two days, but it pushed me over the edge and I just about lost it when I got home.
WTF?
In the neighborhood we used to live in, we had a neighbor who put a huge guillotine out on his driveway. It looked like it could work. Shortly after, he was arrested for hiring a hitman to kill his business partner, having a forged passport (he was English), and having illegal guns.
I sometimes go on walks after dark. It’s a safe neighborhood, but I still don’t use a flashlight for the same reason that you don’t use active sonar, and so I can see the stars better. I usually see a lot more deer than people. One night a large animal was walking straight towards me in the middle of the street and making grunting sounds. I retreated and put a mailbox between myself and the creature.
As he walked past, I said to the old man “I thought you were a deer for a second there.” He didn’t reply. I was embarassed, thinking I might have looked like a cartoon character hiding behind a narrow tree.
I also saw a guy ride a bicycle at a fair clip past me with no lights, on the darkest part of the path. It seemed rather dangerous.
Early this morning, I went out to the elevated boardwalk over the wetlands at our local children’s science museum. A nifty place, for I’ve seen everything from foxes to river otters there.
And I was stunned to find somebody sleeping there. On the ground.
He was a young man, 20-ish. Very pale, shaven, with a goatee. Looked like a fairly well-groomed college kid. He had a backpack (used as a pillow), a gallon jug of water (or some clear liquid), and a bicycle.
What’s odd is that trail has cameras all long it, & the cops don’t let anybody there after dark.
He was so pale that I walked to the local police station, & asked them to do a welfare check on the kid.
I didn’t approach the kid, as it is a very lonely & isolated spot.
He’s just not like the local homeless/vagrant population. I simply can’t account for him.
in the big city you see many things, you start to get over the “huh” moment.
this summer i’ve seen thomas jefferson (yes, the red headed president) twice. one time he was walking down the street listening to his ipod. the next time he was getting out of his car going into a restaurant.
both times i did a " did i just see…" double take.
i also enjoy the corner bagpiper. he has heads swiveling blocks away, trying to figure out where “that sound” is. people look around, and at each other, but seem to be very reluctant to ask if anyone else is hearing bagpipes.
Ooo, I’ve been waiting for this thread.
So, close to my immediate neighborhood is a busy 4 way stop sign intersection with houses on each corner.
One day, one of the houses has A WHOLE OTHER HOUSE sitting in the front yard with it’s back to the intersection. The oddest thing about this whole other house is that it does not look like the kind of house you can just pick up and move. It appears to have several randomly added additions of different colors and sidings on the back. It is two stories (in parts) and has a two story front porch.
So, there it sits for a month or more and then is one day in a different spot, next to the first house, facing front to the street and now several weeks later a brick footing (don’t know the right word) is being built around it’s base.
Well, I too am living on a college campus, so weird is sort of the status quo. However:
Overheard between two guys leaving the laundry room this morning: “Oh, so that’s probably why I can’t knock the wall down!”
A guy came into the cafeteria for dinner tonight with a saucepan on his head like a hat. He proceeded to ask the utterly-bewildered server to scoop some meat and potatos into it.
All-time favorite: Last winter on a Wednesday night. I’m lying on my bed, reading for class. I hear the door to the building open and the unmistakable stamped of several college guys entering. They pound on someones door, and the next thing I hear is a truly ecstatic “Whoo-hoo! More Jello!!!”
Linky .
So, on top of all that, he was a time traveler too?
Heh, you know, as the words were coming out of mouth, I was thinking to myself “Sheesh, this poor guy probably gets this all the time.” so I was expecting maybe an eye roll or maybe even just ignoring me, but he seriously looked completely perplexed … maybe more like he didn’t speak English? (this possibility is just occurring to me now) Always possible in New York!
In Brooklyn, we’ve got a wild herd (yeah, I guess that should be flock) of parrots, presumably escaped parrots that have found each other. The first time I saw them, my jaw dropped!
Other WTF things around my neighborhood: There’s the Pho place that has a big crudely-painted mural of a skyline, with the legend: “The City Where Dreams Come True.” The skyline’s most prominent features are the CN Tower and the Skydome. (It’s a Toronto skyline.) WTF?
Not recent, but: Ladder Guy. He’s still at it. He had a fall earlier this year that kept him off the ladder for a while – instead he stayed at the base of the ladder and sent his teenaged son up in his stead. I can only imagine what his wife thought of that.
Your neighbor is Superman, obviously.
A week ago I was on my way to karate - a short route that takes me past the local rec center. When i passed the rec center, I saw a dude lying in the ditch next to the enterance with his bike. The bike looked neatly placed on the ditch incline, and dude looked like he was also neatly placed with his legs jackknifed and his arms at his side.
On first glance, noting all the gear on his bike and the fact that he had a big beard and big bushy hair, i thought maybe he was just a hippie biker who’d been using the bike lane and found this to be a good shady spot to take a nap. Then I thought maybe he had been hurt. OR maybe there was a bus stop there at the rec center (now that I think of it, i think the stop is IN the parking lot, not on the road.)
I didn’t want to call 911 since I only had a cell and wasn’t sure there’d been an accident (wasn’t sure who i’d be connected with). Then I couldn’t remember our police’s regular number. xxx-1234 - but we have 2 local area codes. And do they answer that phone at 5:30?
I decided to take a look to see if he was still there at my return at 6:30 but it slipped my mind. I am such a bad citizen 
What makes you think the beer bottle was 2/3rds full of beer?
California is one of the states that is known to have large populations of several types of introduced parrots. Florida does as well.
It’s generally accepted in the birdwatching community that some introductions of exotic birds into North America have happened when entire flocks of birds were accidentally released from damaged shipping containers at airports and such. Also, the conventional wisdom on the introduction of the House Finch to eastern North America is that some of them were released en masse by unscrupulous pet dealers when authorities started cracking down on them (it wasn’t legal to sell them as pets). This type of thing has probably happened more than once and could explain how you might see an entire flock of exotic birds of the same type and size.
Last week I saw a Hummer drive down the street with one of those Dominoes Pizza delivery lights on top of it. That was a serious WTF.