Sunday, April 10, 2016

"Only You"

    At least twice a week I relay a story to someone and they respond by saying either: "only you see these things," or "that would only happen to you."  I'm not sure if I should be offended my these remarks or not.  On one hand it could be seen a privilege, but maybe people are saying it to me as an insult.  Maybe I should explain myself.

     Earlier this week I was speaking with a musician a friend of mine, and I had mentioned that it had been a year since I saw him play a gig.  I reminded him that it was at this same show that I had witnessed a man repeatedly biting his girlfriend. The girlfriend biter was wearing a shirt that said Jesus Is A Cunt, so it was hard to miss him in pointing him out to your friends.  Incidentally, a few months after this show I was at another show and spotted him again.  However, this time he was not the spectacle.  What caught my eye this time was a man with no shoes on, no shirt, eating a hamburger and walking into a porta potty.  It may have legitimately been the filthiest thing I've ever bared witness to in my entire life.  I half expected John Waters to emerge from the porta potty next to his and present him with the Lifetime Achievement award for filthiest human being.  I imagined the award would resemble an oscar, but upon closer inspection it would just be a golden figure of Divine eating a dog turd.

Going in for a bite
     After seeing the filthiest person alive, I went back to my lawn seat.  I was having some quality people watching time and just sort of noticed a hippie looking hipster in a tie dyed shirt and a guy in a trucker hat sit down on the ground diagonal from us.  All of a sudden out of nowhere, a third, more douchey looking hipster appears and sits on on the head of the tie dyed shirt wearing hipster.  He was practically tea bagging this kid.  It wasn't just that it happened randomly, or even suddenly.  It was just the fact that it happened and I was the only one that saw it.  After that a large man stepped directly in front of me and blocked my view of the stage completely.

Just stand wherever 
     The other day at work a squirrel dropped a chicken leg on an angry, swearing man.  The man kept referring to the dumpster diving squirrels as "fucking tree rats.  His hatred for these creatures was overwhelming.  The angry man explained that last week "the same fucking tree rat," had dropped a "fucking donut" on his head.  I can understand his hostility.  I bet I would be unhappy if small rodents were always dropping food on me too.  I've never had a squirrel drop food on my head at work.  The worst thing that I can remember happening was the day I was walking out to the dumpster, and I stepped in a pile of meat on the way to throw out a bag of teeth.  Maybe it was a cup of teeth.  I'll be honest, I don't remember the exact details.

In looking for this photo I realized that there was a bag of teeth and a cup of teeth that I had found on two separate occasions

  I once had to explain to my fiancé how I broke the Otterbox case on my iPhone because I saw a man on a rascal, get up and take his shirt off.  I mean it was at the state fair, so it meant either dropping my beer, the $150 steam mop that I had just purchased, or dropping the phone.  The good news is that I was able to get a picture of the shirtless, rascal man.  Plus I was able to incorporate it into my holiday card.

I found Santa
    Awhile back I was talking to someone of Facebook, because they saw something odd and wanted to bring it to my attention. That day I had just happened to witness a man pushing a shopping cart, get into a fight with a toilet seat that he had hanging on the front of his cart.  I was only able to get a partial photo, as the light turned green and my spouse started driving away.  But my friend brought up a valid point in our Facebook conversation.  She said that maybe not everyone sees these things, not because they aren't happening, but because they don't want to.  That it's sort of like how only certain people see ghosts, because their minds are open to seeing the ghosts.  Maybe I see these strange things because my mind is open to seeing these strange things.

      Yesterday, I was sneezed on by a chicken.  When I posted about it on social media the first response I got was: "that would only happen to you!"  It made me think back to earlier in the week, when I reminded my friend about the guy biting his girlfriend, which led to the porta potty story and then to the squirrel and chicken ordeal.  To which he responded "only you see these things."

     I do see these things.  These things do happen to me.  I don't know why, but they do.  I'm not religious or really spiritual, but I'd kind of like to think that with all of the infinite wisdom in the world there is an equal and infinite amount of weirdness.  Maybe once in awhile when you stop to look at something so odd, so completely outlandish, the universe also stops and looks back.  In one precious moment of strange, awe inspired glory.
 
   











   

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