This was a post I actually wrote last year right before What’s That Smell? took on its current form. It seemed a shame to let it get lost in cyberspace….
I’ve seen some strange things in my day. From coast to coast of these United States, I’ve definitely seen my fair share of weirdos and bizarre occurrences.
Take, for instance, the man that got stuck in a revolving door at the World Trade Center in New York City in 1992. It may be slightly irreverent to laugh about it now, and I’m sure the man who got stuck didn’t find it funny, but my friend and I still share a laugh about it to this day. Hundreds of thousands of people or more passed quickly and easily through those revolving doors, many immediately before this poor gentleman. For whatever reason, his trip through them was not destined to be successful. As he pushed forward on the doors he got about half-way through and the doors just stopped, causing the unsuspecting man to slam full force and face first into the glass in front of him. Along with the “smack” came a priceless look somewhere between sheer terror and extreme embarrassment. Plenty of fodder for 2 college age women to find hysterical. Once the man regained his composure, he pushed on the doors again, and they began to move as if nothing was wrong.
In 2002, in a Wal-mart parking lot in Oxnard California (maybe an hour North of L.A.) I was walking across the parking lot when a man in the back of a pickup truck said to me “hey, do you like steak?” Now, there was a part of my brain that thought this was some pervert, but there were plenty of people around, and quite frankly in my younger days I was always looking for an opportunity to use my martial arts training, so I said “sure.” 
The man pointed down to a large cooler he had sitting in the back of the pick-up truck and said “do you want to buy some?” At that point I admit that I (yes, the person who has an answer for everything) was caught off guard and just stared for a second trying to wrap my brain around the idea that some guy was trying to sell “steak” from the back of a pick-up in the Wal-mart parking lot. “Um, no thanks” was the brilliant retort I came up with. Oh well, only in California I thought.
This morning, while driving to work, I was behind a red pickup truck and noticed, at a stoplight, that the man was rinsing off a toothbrush outside his window with a bottle of water. I thought to myself, ‘what kind of weirdo brushes his teeth in the car?’ We continued driving, and then at the next stoplight, I noticed the man’s arm moving vigorously back and forth in front of his face – and when I said vigorously, you’d think he was trying to remove his teeth, not just brush them. This went on even after the light turned green. Needless to say, I dropped back another car length – just in case. I was still watching as we rolled up to the next red light. By that time the brushing had stopped and the man took the time to admire himself in both his rearview and sideview mirror. You’d think the guy was shaving with the toothpaste too, considering how much of it was running down his chin. His admiration continued for a couple of seconds (maybe foaming at the mouth is some kind of indication of good luck on whatever planet this guy came from) and then he took a swig of water, still not bothering to wipe his face. For the next 2 miles we drove on and repeatedly the whole time – while the car was still moving – he stuck his head out the side window and spit white foam all over the road. Finally, he turned off onto a different street. I guess driving is just something you do while performing personal hygiene.
I’m sure that people have seen me do things that they consider strange or amusing, but generally they usually occur from lack of balance or coordination, not mental illness (although my husband may disagree with that assessment). It reaches a point where common sense has to take over, right? Right? In hindsight, maybe common sense is not so common…..
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