I had a LaRouche experience in Seattle once. I was walking down by the convention center when one of his followers handed me the latest LaRouche rant mag (I think the cover story was about how George Soros is the Antichrist or something like that), with the perky exclamation, “Hey! Did you know we’re entering a new Ice Age???” I thanked him for the magazine and, as I walked away he said “It’s a phase change, maaan!” That made my day, in a very odd sort of way.
Also, working in retail I frequently encounter customers who have a very, uh, interesting view of things. Of note was an elderly woman who ranted at me for about 10 minutes because I had politely said “no problem” about something, because she felt that the phrase was lazy and devoid of meaning and people never think about how to use language properly and words were very important to her and I should think about how I use words and on and on and ON. Well, thank god I hadn’t told her to “Have a nice day”
My friend has a WTF story that still makes me smile - walking home from work one night (she lives in NYC), she noticed a guy on the other side of the street staring at her. Suddenly the guy runs to the nearest flower patch (must’ve been someone’s garden or something), rips out a handful of flowers by their roots, runs across the street and hands them to her. Then runs away.
My friend was so confused that she ended up walking home, holding a bunch of stolen flowers with the dirt still clinging to their roots.
I had almost this exact experience in reverse. Only I didn’t have a husband, and at the time I was neither old nor gray. And the woman didn’t just graze my butt, she full-on parked her cart against my butt and then when I asked her to remove it, she snottily griped “why? it ain’t hurtin nuthin!”.
I said something to the effect of “the clerk isn’t going to check out the lady in front of me any faster with your cart shoved up my butt, and I’ll guarantee you’ll be stuck here a lot longer if you DON’T remove it”. FWIW it was Walmart, and that’s just one, out of a thousand reasons I hate that place.
Many years ago I parked my car up in the parking lot at Stonehenge, and when my passenger opened her door, the wind caught it and pulled it out of her hand; it flew right open and it tapped the side of the car next to us.
There was an old guy sitting in the car, who got out, outraged. I ran round to his car and checked for any damage, of which there was none.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “Luckily it doesn’t seem to have done anything bad.” The old guy looked at the car and back at me, then said, scowling:
I have a Larouche supporter story, too. It was the 80s and I was walking in to a Virginia DMV, I was wearing a Billy Idol T-shirt (it was the 80s). There was a Larouche supporter out front who wanted me to sign some petition, I don’t remember for what, but I declined and went in the DMV.
When I came out the Larouche supporter said to me, “Billy Idol isn’t going to cure AIDS, sir.” I said, “you are probably right.”
Another one: I was in Chinatown in London and heard music playing outside the restaurant I was in. I went out and was greeted by this - a huge crowd of Hare Krishnas dancing around and generally having a great time (including the fat guy in a trailer playing the drums).
Passers-by were joining in the dancing and generally it was a really fun scene.
In that second video you can see a bald guy dancing around. He saw me filming with my iPhone and came up to me with a huge grin and wild, excited eyes, grabbed my hand and said:
“Can you feel the love? Can you?”
“Yes,” I smiled, “I think I can.”
“This is what it’s all about! It’s like this all the time!” and danced off.
This happened at a train station in Sydney (Circular Quay).
I wanted to buy a weekly travel pass and I go to the train tickets counter. Time is around 7 pm and I am the only customer in the queue.
Weekly travel pass is $46. Since I hated getting coins back (you could kill a man with Australian 50c), I hand over $56 and ask for a travel pass. Ticket counter man, all he had to do was hand me a $10 note and the pass and I would’ve been on my merry way home.
No. He starts shouting at me for:
Increasing his workload
How people like me complicates life
Tried explaining that he needs to only give me a $10 note and the pass. He doesn’t agree and goes on about how easy it would’ve been if I only gave him the $50 note. So I asked him to take the $50 and give me the rest and do the transaction the way he wants. Nopes. He still goes on about giving change.
After I tell him that I don’t want the pass and just give me the money back, he decides take the $50 and give me the pass.
WTF??
Had an unpleasant today. I was on the bus and a guy just started furiously screaming at me in (I suppose) an African language. He really was threathening, and luckily it was a full bus in broad daylight. I told him to be calm, that I didn’t understand him, avoided further interaction, and after a while he sat back down.
I really don’t know what I did to bring that on. I hadn’t even looked at him, nor pointedly avoided him until that point. I later found my bus ticket was missing, so my WAG is that maybe he had pointed out that my ticket had fallen, I hadn’t heard him and he perceived this as some kind of slight, possibly racist as the town I live in can be quite bigoted. Or it was something else completely. Suffice to say I wasn’t aware of doing or not doing anything in particular and was suddenly under verbal attack. Not fun.
I’m reminded of that episode of the Simpsons when Lisa tries to ask a Russian guy for directions and he tells her but she interprets it as him screaming abuse at her. Maybe that’s what happened? OK, probably not, but it’s a glass half full way of looking at it!
Sweet looking gray haired lady was at the table next to mine at a restaurant. She gets up to leave, walks by my table and farts. :eek: Never stops or says anything. I swear something had crawled up and died in that woman’s ass. I couldn’t finish my dinner. I was too nauseous.
One day when I was around 17, I was sitting in my car reading. This is at a city park overlooking a lake and it was a nice spring day, so I had my windows down (not that I had a choice - I drove a '65 Mustang with no air).
I’m the only one in this area and I see someone else pull up around 8 spaces away. I just notice him walking down toward the water out of the corner of my eye. He spends a few minutes down there and then heads back up toward his car.
He then gets to his car and then starts walking toward me. Comes up to me and we start talking about what a nice day, etc… We talk like this for about 10 minutes and I think everything is completely normal…
Then, he says he’s looking for his friend and he drives a brown van. I tell him I haven’t seen any other cars other than his since I’ve been here. He seems disappointed and then says:
“Man, that guy sure does give a good blowjob… You don’t do anything like that, do ya?”
By the “do ya”, I had started my car, backed up and peeled the hell out of that parking lot (being a 289 V-8, I left a LOT of smoke)!
Another one - was in a McDonalds in the late 80’s with a couple friends from High School who smoked (me too). We were in the smoking section and were not being annoying or loud or blowing smoke around. We also sat at the wall of the smoking section to be as far away as possible from the non-smoking area…
An older woman comes in and sits at the other far wall as far away as possible from the smoking section. She sits there and eats her lunch, but keeps looking at us. I’m thinking she knows one of us, but she never approaches.
She finally gets up to leave and throws out her trash and is about to walk out the door, but stops, turns around and comes over to our table. She then spurts out:
“You better smoke those things while you can, cause you can’t get 'em in HELL!” and marches out the door…
Often it is the shoes. Much different styling, and Americans lace them with X’s showing while most Europeans lace them with parallel cords showing on top. Also shoes are expensive, bulky and heavy to take home, so tourists won’t often buy new ones at the destination.
I can’t say that I’ve ever examined people’s laces too closely (while being conscious of the fact that I can’t tie mine the way probably most others do), but to me the first of those looks “normal”, while the second looks like the way shoes are laced when on display. So for me at least, this ain’t one of them shibboleths!
Had a friend do this at a party, asking about the lad’s blonde hair and blue eyes when we both have brown hair and brown-ish eyes. And then she went bright red because she suddenly realized the implications of what she’d just asked. The look on her face was priceless.
(As it happens both our families have lots of blonde or red hair and blue eyes even though we don’t and the lad must have got the recessives).
