This was awhile back, but I know this guy that plays piano in the local bars. I saw him sitting on the back of a pickup truck with his piano as the truck slowly stopped at a stop sign, then made a right turn. I shouted out, “Five Easy Pieces”, and he began to play like the scene from the movie as the truck drove out of site.
Yesterday, I walked past a preserved section of the Berlin Wall and through Checkpoint Charlie.
A local guy asked me for driving directions. It may not sound surreal, but there was literally a sea of people on motorbikes surrounding us, of which I was the only white guy. Why would he even think I would understand Vietnamese, much less know how to direct him? By good fortune though, I did know the way, and was able to stammer it out more or less coherently to him.
I picked up a Miss World contestant, took her home and done the business. Next morning when I woke up (and sobered up) she momentarily turned into a fugly. I thought “my god, this is surreal”. Just after she squeezed her fat ass into a taxi and went home she turned back into a Miss World contestant. Needless to say when I told my workmates about my conquest the night before I left out the surreal part.
This is not my surreal moment, but two of my close friends that I thought I would share.
My friends were in Switzerland hiking down a mountain. It was very hard and they were huffing and breathing heavily at the effort. They, like me, are out of shape as well.
When they stopped to catch their breath, they heard the distinct sound of whistling. Looking up from their wheezing state they see a line of briskly walking nuns walking uphill while whistling.
They nearly passed out from laughing so hard.
[I dunno, I think the nun moment was fairly surreal…
Anyway, here’s another one that JUST happened.
I live in the middle of metro Nashville (not rural and not the suburbs.) Right off a major street, in fact. There are three duplexes clustered together on the corner of two streets (traffic day and night) that basically share a backyard. Two days ago, what should I see right behind my neighbor’s house but a GIANT dead deer. So there’s a dead deer in… well, basically, in MY backyard. For one thing, that’s surreal. For another thing, it’s making me want to strangle the neighbors. (Oh, don’t WORRY! I’m not actually going to DO it!)
My most recent surreal experience (and I’ve had many…) was while I was grocery shopping. A guy walked past me with a spring in his step, whistling a cheery tune.
What’s so surreal about that?
Well, the tune he was whistling was … Eye of the Tiger.
Not a good whistling tune, that.
I was playing a LARP (Live Action Roleplaying, a bunch of geeks dress up in costumes and go out in the woods to play make-believe for a few hours or days). The setting was fantasy (tech level medieval plus some magic). We were a band of celticish warriors hunting a dragon. We were in no way sure that we were tough enough to defeat the dragon, but we had reason to believe that sooner or later it would attack our villages. Better to meet it at a time and place we chose.
We had set up a small tent camp. I had drawn the last watch of the night. As dawn was breaking, the black and white of forest and snow was slowly taking on more colour. It was a few degrees below zero, cold enough to put a bite to the air, but not cold enough to make you freeze. It was very silent. I was in a mood partly in role, partly out of it. As hildea, I was enjoying the beauty of the morning. As quasiceltic warrior, I was apprehensive about the coming hunt - what would happen if we found the dragon? What would happen if it found us first? And, of course, I was doing my best to stay alert for movement and sound, uncomfortably aware that the rest of the camp would need some time to get up if something happened, and that if we were attacked in force my signal would probably go something like “Attack! Attack! Att… aaaaargh!”
Then I heard that “Flapp flapp flapp” sound which for some reason always puts me in mind of Vietnam war films, despite the fact that the vast majority of helicopters I’ve seen in real life have been airborne ambulances. Without thinking, I scuttled in under the skirts of a huge pine, just as a military helicopter passed above, very close over the treetops. In a corner of my mind, I was thinking “Oh, yeah - there’s a NATO excercise in this area right now.” But mostly, my feelings were a weird mixture of “What if Norway was invaded by someone vastly superior in hardware and technology, and I was part of the guerrilla” and “Arrgh! The dragon!” A mixture of feeling small, vulnerable and defiant, knowing that the huge, noisy thing above belonged to the “real world” but feeling that it fitted into the make believe-situation so well that it enforced the fantasy setting, rather than tearing it apart.
SpouseO and I were walking home from our favorite haunt. We’d heard that the bar we pass by on the way home was having a KISS tribute band it, but we weren’t really interested in seeing it. As we walk by the bar, we see a white van with a UHaul behind it.
“Hey, that’s the band’s van.” Which was cool enough. Until we looked at the van’s occupants.
The band had apparently just gotten there and hadn’t gotten out yet. So there’s five guys sitting inside, in full makeup and black KISS regalia. Which was really funny.
Hmmm - always thought Gene Simmons would be in a tour bus or something, not a plain old white van with a UHaul.
Most of my life is surreal.
OTTOMH
Using a long ride on a city bus to turn feather boa yarn into a mane for my Cowardly Lion mask. People stare. Nobody says anything.
To sew the tornado costume, I needed to get the frame to stand upright while I taped the fabric in place so that it draped properly. I tried various things at home, but they all fell over. When I saw friends that week I said “I need somebody to hold this funnel on their head for ten minutes.”
This week I went shopping for groceries. I bought an icecream bar, which I ate as I walked back home. I wore a t-shirt, shorts, and a very light windbreaker that I didn’t bother to close. It was 48 degrees. I wasn’t cold.
Several years ago I went on a beach vacation. I had heard rumors that one end of a particular beach was bathing-suit optional. I decided to check it out, and decided to fit in by shedding my own suit. After a while, I waded out to around willy-depth. Then this middle aged guy approached me and struck up a conversation. So there I was, staring at these beautiful national landmark clay cliffs, all naked, with big striped bass swimming mere inches from my frank and beans, carrying on a normal conversation with a middle aged overweight naked man who was wearing nothing but a gold chain and a bad toupe.
I’d say that qualifies as surreal.
As a bonus surreal moment, when I was walking on the beach, I saw a fetching young lady sitting on a towel, naked as all get out, munching on some potato chips. The bag was between her spread legs, its logo looking like an advertisement for her sexual favors: Lays.
This morning, on The Diane Rehm Show on NPR. She was speaking to a man in the fashion industry. At one point, she asked him, “And what would you like to do in women’s clothes?”
Laughter went up in all the rooms within earshot here at the radio staion. For Diane Rehm, that was pretty surreal!
Yesterday I was on the bus, totally absorbed in a book, (Rudy Rucker’s As Above, So Below, a fictionalized account of the elder Bruegel’s life,) and I kept getting distracted by the guy behind me having a loud cell-phone conversation. “Yeah, the such-and-such line goes out to Chilliwack. Yeah. Chilliwack.” “Canadian National Rail. No, Canadian National. They’re not yellow-on-red any more. Blue. Blue. Blue and white and red.”
After a while, I realize he’s been going on for about ten minutes, talking trivia about trains. I start to think he must have a bad connection, or that he’s talking to someone that’s hard of hearing, because, now that I’m paying a bit more attention, he says everything at least three times. “The CN station on Terminal is now the Via Rail station. Via Rail. Via Rail. The sign doesn’t fit the building. It’s the wrong style. The wrong style.” “The Skytrain doesn’t stop there. It stops across the street. On the other side of Main Street. It stops across the street.”
At this point, I look over my left shoulder, and realize that the guy isn’t talking on a cell at all. He’s just talking to himself about trains. I give up and close my book, knowing that there’s no way I’m going to be able to get back into it until he quiets down, and there was no reason to expect that to happen any time soon.
I turn to share a commiserative look with the big guy sitting next to me-- and that’s when I notice that he’s staring at a fixed point in space, rocking in his seat, and drooling. He’d been sitting next to me for at least twenty minutes, and I hadn’t so much as glanced at him.
I opened my book and started reading again.
I know you were there and I wasn’t, so I’ll take your word for it. But is it possible that he was using a hands-free set? A few years ago, before I even knew such things existed, I got on an elevator with one other person. He started talking to himself. I was feeling weirded out by it until I noticed the little mic on his lapel.
All this happened in Vancouver, Canada? Somebody should have filmed it and turned it into an anti-marijuana commercial. See, see? Look what it’s doing to those poor Canadians!