Those moments are all lost, like… tears…in the rain.
Me, I’ve seen lovers flying through the air hand in hand
I’ve seen babies dancing in the midnight sun
And I’ve seen pigs all sitting watching picture slides
Valentine’s Day, 1996, I was driving in the snow on the way to work. Ahead of me, there was a car stopped on the shoulder, with someone outside the car. A tractor-trailer drove down the exit and jack-knifed.
It happened so fast. And it just so happened that it hit the person standing by the car and launched him across all 3 lanes. Fortunately there were no cars there, but we were all moving at such a speed that it would have been worse if we had tried to stop in time, due to the poor road conditions.
Others behind us pulled over to help.
According to the next day’s news, the man only broke some ribs, and would be out the hospital soon.
Talk of (ought to be) wild animals reminds me: a couple of years back we were vacationing in Brittany, France in August, and the circus was in town. French circuses still have animal acts, so it was a curiosity to see a couple of huge trailers which were essentially cages for the show’s lions. Irrespective of how you feel about animals being used like that, it was a striking sight. And this being France (where Health And Safety barely exists) you could walk right up to the cages. They were very impressive animals - even if they were just lying about snoozing on a hot August afternoon.
This was the circus’ first day in town, and they were still setting up. As we were looking at the lions, some sort of run-through was going on inside the big top - you could hear them going through the music. As one piece of music ended and another started, all of the lions suddenly jumped to their feet and started pacing and roaring. That’s my music man - hell, I’m on NOW!
Very weird.
j
We were driving through France and had to stop for a potty break. We stopped at a McDonald’s that was in the middle of nowhere - agricultural land, if I remember correctly.
In the ladies’ room, there was a second little toilet. It was doll-sized - not quite small enough for a Barbie doll, but definitely way too small for a toddler to use. It was attached to the wall just like the big normal toilet. There was no tongue-in-cheek sign explaining that it was a joke or a pretend toilet for dolls, or anything. Just a tiny little toilet attached to the wall.
The finding of bodies and witnessing of police doing same reminded me of this much lighter one.
Sitting outside a café in a very small town in Australia, having a coffee. I noticed a commotion in the park opposite; there was a little thicket of trees, with lots of people clustering around it, waving arms about and obviously excited about something.
A few minutes later, several police cars pull up. Cue visibly excited people running between the police and the thicket.
Several police follow, and vanish into the crowd.
A few minutes after that, the crowd suddenly starts dispersing. You can tell by their walks that all joy and excitement has gone from their day.
Most of the police return to their vehicles, leaving a lone irritated-looking copper scrabbling out of the trees, dragging a blow-up doll by one leg.
Coffee and a show. Highly recommended.
I had a decapitated thrush left in a mistnet after witnessing a Cooper’s Hawk bounced out of it. I’m kind of glad I saw the hawk rather than just coming across this thrush corpse. (I’ve also had Guineafowl and a bear run through my nets. Nets take a lot of abuse.)
Driving up to work at a 4-way stop, I saw a Blue Jay land on a branch that extended over the intersection. A couple of seconds later, it keeled over and fell onto the roadway. Being an ornithologist (specializing in corvids), I went out to check on the now dead jay. I guess it had a heart attack? It was so alive and then so dead.
Years ago, I worked at a place that had a little patio and garden where employees could take their breaks or eat their lunch. I was sitting there with a few other secretaries and wasn’t paying attention to their gossip, which bored me. As I looked out at the garden, I saw a honeybee sailing along, but not with any purpose. As I watched, it floated slowly to the pavement. After it landed, it walked around in circles, looking confused. Then it stopped, stretched its wings out to the sides, and curled up and died.
I read afterwards that honeybees just keep flying and working until their pre-ordained lifespan gives out, and they die on the job. I’m sure that was what I witnessed.
Years ago, I was driving home around 1am in north Austin, in a not overly-developed area of Pflugerville. It was probably about mid-December. I turned a corner, and saw someone in a full kimono roller blading on the side of the road. It was pretty windy and cold, so she was shielding her face with a fan.
That was probably the most surreal thing I’ve ever seen.
ah, the circus of France!
Thought of one other thing:
I used to bike/walk to the cafe I worked at very early in the morning so I would be the first FOH person. (Say, 5am or so…) One day I biked past the nearest park, in the dark and saw a shirtless, singing/jogging man with a guitar. Like, jogging on the path with skimpy running shorts, mid-hootenanny. I guess anytime is a great time to practice!
This reminded me of being in Tehran airport, May 1977. It was a stopover on a long flight, I think Istanbul to Tehran to Bangkok, and we may have been required to deplane. The terminal looked like a modern building, like any other airport I’d been in.
My sister and I were young teens, light on our feet, and rushed to the ladies room ahead of all the other passengers. It looked like a standard restroom with tiles, sinks, faucets, mirrors, toilet stalls–but when we opened the stall doors, all we saw were holes in the ground. Not squat toilets, just plain holes. We looked in every stall, around 4 or 5 of them, just in case the first 2 stalls were under construction or something, but they were all just holes.
We were really confused and when some adult women came in, we asked if they knew if there was another toilet anywhere. They were taken aback as well. One of them looked out into the hallway and saw a flight attendant and asked her, and she laughed and said that was all that the airport had, and if we could hold it in, to just wait and go in the plane restroom.
When we met up with my dad and brother we asked them about their bathroom experience, and they said no toilets in the men’s room either.
When my daughter was little, we saw a little no name circus on the side of the road and decided to stop in. We were just in time for the main attraction.
From the top of the tent, a very short plump woman begins to descend by her ponytail. From where I was sitting, I could see a group of about 4 men holding the other end of her hair and pulling her up and down as she performed. I watched them more than I watched her, I think. It was very amusing.
Although I have seen a few spectacular car accidents, I’d say the weirdest thing I have personally witnessed is a monumental bolt of lightning hitting my barn and instantly setting it on fire. It then burned to the ground. That was five months ago, about 10 pm.
I was driving to work one winter morning. I was driving slower than the posted speed limit because it was icy on the highway. The guy behind me decided he was going to pass me. As he got even with me, his car did a 360 spin. I let off my gas, and he shot across the highway in front of me. I watched him come to rest on the only driveway there. The rest of the shoulder was a pretty steep drop off into a ditch. When I saw him come to a safe stop, I continued my drive.
Another one I just thought of. When I was a kid, we were in the living room watching TV, there was a close lightning strike and a ball of electricity shot out of the TV and made it the length of the room before dissipating.
Goldfish (I assume it was a goldfish) are tough bastards. When I was about twenty, my girlfriend had an aquarium with several goldfish and other cold water fish. One night, as we came home from the pub, her oldest veteran goldfish (15 years old) lay on the carpet, not moving and dry as a stockfish. She put him back into the aquarium, he sank to the ground, shook himself a bit and began to swim about as happily as ever, only having lost his color, to live happily ever after.
Happened to me too, back in the '80s. My then-bf drove a Ford Escort on its deathbed. The hood popped open on the Grand Central Parkway. Fun!
I was once at a casual party at the house of some people I knew slightly. I needed to use the bathroom, so of course asked where it was and went in and used it.
While I was seated on the john, a very small door right next to the toilet, just by my left ankle, which I hadn’t noticed before, popped open; and a very large black cat came out of it.
Luckily, I like cats.
We were doing a field exercise at Fort Knox when there was an ice storm. When you see a M1 tank on the ice your brain automatically thinks it will just crunch it up. It doesn’t. The weight is spread out over the tracks so the load is surprisingly low. So I got to watch a M1 sliding sideways down a hill towards someone walking by. It looked like a slow motion disaster. The soldier fell on the ice trying to get out of the way. Luckily the tank came to a stop before it got to him.
I live in a neighborhood with big trees, and one afternoon in May with trees coming into full leaf, 2-3 years ago, I pulled up at the curb in my car and heard screams overhead. A red-tailed hawk must have swooped down to capture a squirrel and was carrying it away in its talons. I’m glad I didn’t get out of the car a moment earlier because it looked like the squirrel might have been dripping blood.
Back in the 1990s I was walking in Central Park in NY and saw a shirtless man jogging while juggling 3 clubs. I didn’t know until looking it up just now that there have been “Joggling” races since 2008.