Eccentric Strangers

micro gift

2006-12-14T14:43:00.000-08:00

The 18th of September, Chile's national holiday, I gathered with friends at Chritian's apartment. We went together to get on a city bus, and I sat on one side of the bus that just had single seats. Pretty soon I began to feel this bonk on my head, and i turned around to see a 20 something year old chilean guy holding a funny shaped balloon from one of the festivities. He said hello, and I soon turned around. Eventually he began to bonk me on the head again until I turned around. He said I reminded him of his ex girlfriend, who he had a kid with.
So he gave me a beer. As a gift, he said.

Everybody on the bus looked a little concerned, as i tried to refuse the beer but eventually just gave in.

I turned around and the bonking continued. Eventually he told me he had to leave but it was really nice to meet me since I remind him so much of her. He shook my hand to leave and slipped a little packet into it. I didnt look inside but when wee got off the bus my guy friends insisted i toss it because it was this type of cocaine base drug thats super addictive here.

He really never even asked for my number or anything, it wasnt even like he was hitting on me, just trying to talk to me and tell me how i looked like her

this may just top it all

2006-06-19T12:52:00.000-07:00

6:25 am, i pass the mediterranean deli, and an african man stares at me from his car before letting me pass and then pulling out onto university. he drives at the pace of my bike for about a block, even though (biking uphill) i am going significantly lower than the speed limit.
he begins to pull over to the side of the road, i bike faster.

i cant even explain how stupid this was, but in essense he pulled a U turn from the right lane, and the car in the left lane, though swerving immensely and giving a horn warning, gets the shit nailed out of the passenger side. it was the most deserving accident i've ever seen. (on his part, poor girl... who knows if he evven has insurance or will tell the truth about the accident.)

serves you right, creepy dude

Want a beer?

2006-06-04T18:08:00.000-07:00

I sit down near the river bank to read and after about 5 minutes a 40 something man approaches and sits next to me. I've never really had a thing for red heads with mustaches.
Or just red heads,
old men
or a 'stache in general.

Already fumbling with my camera, I figure fuck it and start a video recording. It needs dubbing, but it kicks off with "Oh shit, I'd better hide these beers."

Wendell introduces himself and proceeds not to impress me for the next half hour. I mean, he was already down a few points from being random, ugly, and about to drink in the park, but the illogical move of slipping increasingly detailed tidbits of his life as a cement pourer really wasnt giving this guy a greater chance of me not thinking he's annoying, creepy, nieve and dumb.

Like any girl I normally think I have too big of thighs but momentarily they provided a nice vision barrier between him and my rapid scribbling of his quotes.

"Lydia is a nice German name"
"It's Greek"
"Oh, I'd love to go there, to Greece and Ethiopia."
(Ethiopia=totally random, but he wants to go there because hominoids began in Ethiopia, but he has to go there to prove it himself. He read a book on evolution, which is where he learned this, but said "I cant even go into it, it's so complicated. But I trust what this guy says cuz he'd researched it.")
Later he admitted he doesn't actually want to travel. "I like this country. I'd hate to leave and go to anywhere else."

Then randomly, "I saw two guys kissin' in the parking lot but I didn't say nothing. ...I mean, I got nothin' against gays. Well, I went 'EEWWW' and they looked at me. I told my friend I saw two guys kissin' and he said, 'Isn't that better than two guys fightin'?' So I guess he's right about that."

And my personal favorite, "You college girls is pretty. But there's a new law. Its illegal for us to oogle at college girls for more than three seconds."

Finally I claimed to be annoyed by the bugs and left, walking my bike up the huge hill on the bluffs. Soon he rode up past me on his moped, pretended it couldn't make it any further, and waits for me but I keep going. Then he gets the moped on the sidewalk and pretends to almost run into me, passes me again, and waits at the top.
"Know of any good restaurants to go to around here."
"Nope, I"ve never been around here before."
"Well I can treat you to dinner."

HHHHHHHHHELLL no. We went opposite directions, but 10 minutes later he passed me going in my direction again.

What a walk

2006-05-31T18:07:00.000-07:00

My walk home from work last Thursday was rather...odd.
Passing the new U Flats going up near my apartment on University a silly old man approaches me on bike. He wore a striped railroad baseball cap, glasses of magnifying capabilities, and a sweatshirt with a large cartoon school bus on it. You're thinking- 'ten bucks says he talks to you.' Do collect.
Our conversation was around ten minutes; at the time I wished I had a tape recorder, but regardless... quotations obviously not exact.

So he stops me, looking completely baffled, and comments on the construction of the new buildings. He questions why they have so much wood, without concrete reinforcements. He rants about how easy it would be to burn them down, especially with students living there. In the midst of this ramble, he suggests something about Iraq being behind it as revenge.
Thats it! I bet Iraq, rather than rebuilding their own country, is secretly behind faulty student housing options.
Judging from my long background in architecture and construction, I try to settle the matter with a 'no candle' policy, but he's not having it. Apparently, this dude's biggest pet peeve is prohibiting things.
He shouts "Its when you prohibit things that everybody has to do it!! Remember prohibition? (yes sir, i remember it like yesterday??) All the students will light candles just because they aren't supposed to. Like the other day, my lady friend calls me and says she's taking Viagra. I told her women arent' supposed to, and it says it right not the packaging, and she tells me thats exactly it, she did it because she wasnt supposed to!"
Eventually, after much ramble and such, he lets me leave. I get halfway down the block when I have left enough distance to call Kat and tell her about the funny character who's granny pals are on Viagra.

It wouldn't be funny if the story ended there. Well yeah it'd still be a little kooky, but anyway...
appraoching the crossroad, a Saab has stopped with a 20something guy in it resembling Peewee Herman. (This is where I missed the warning signal)
I hang up on Kat's ring and approach the car as he was leaning over trying to ask for directionss or something. Assuming I misheard the initial statement, I stick my head in the window to hear again-
"You have nice boobs."
"Uhh....thankyou" And I start to walk away, of course.
"HEY...what size are they???"

Good thing i wear a ring on my ring finger

2006-05-15T13:50:00.000-07:00

6:15 am i'm walking up university to work. A school bus hovers in front of me, and as I walk past, the driver gets out from the front and says "Good morning!"
"morning" i reply

So he pauses, then says "where are you going?"
I vaguely say "oh, I have to be somewhere"
"Oh, well, are you married, or no?"

he says such nice things to me!

2006-05-09T21:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday an old bearded man holding a cardboard sign on a highway onramp yelled at me
"You'd better watch out lookin' that fine,
you're gonna get hurt!!"

haha,
compliment or threat?

dance, dance

2006-05-02T15:54:00.000-07:00

me & hayes...

gettin a groooove on!

2 creepies at once!

2006-04-18T16:17:00.000-07:00

I saw Hatem this morning again on the way to work. He says
"Hi Lydia, how are you?"
"Goodmorning. I'm good, what about you?"
"I am good. And how are you?"

This is where, for once, I was thankful for the creepy man that interrupted and sat next to me, toothless and gross, asking where he can find surplus sleeping bags in this part of town. He also told me to move out of this area, because I felt anxious about being late cuz the 16 took so long.

"I'd let you leave, but I can bet I'm more interesting than whatever else you were doing"

2006-04-07T13:10:00.000-07:00

At a coffee shop, Ben introduces himself to me because I giggled that he commented he was joining the pimps and hoes of the world by paying with $1 bills.
He's 68.

Anyway, he sang me the song "Lydia the tattooed lady" and said anybody who sings me that song must be well educated.

He also told me how stupid people that graduate from college can be.
And about spanish radio advertising revenue
and taking teaching classes.
He spoke of working as a janitor
sociology and statistics
and taking teacher's classes.
He told me to research orwell,
read Gravity's Rainbow
and Cryptonomicon.
He told me to find a job I like
that I need to read more
and that he got high before going to get coffee.

What a perv

2006-04-03T23:20:00.000-07:00

Shannon and I were walking down the street talking about veggie burgers when all of a sudden this plant parted and a man jumped out and yelled at me. I nearly pissed my pants I was so startled. Shannon thought it was so funny he gave the guy a dollar, but I wanted a picture with him so he said "ok, for $2 you can have a picture."
As Shannon grabs the camera the guy goes "Cuz if I took a picture of your bush you'd charge me $2 too."

Crazy Cube Man

2006-03-23T18:32:00.000-08:00

Today I was about to call Kayla while walking between Murphy and Ford, an old man walks up close to me carrying many bags. I have seen this man before, cuz he spends time in the Cube Starbucks sometimes while making gestures at people. As the phone rang I tried to sneak away from him but eventually he was walking so close we nearly touched. He leaned over towards my face within a foot and began saying "hubbubbub, Hubbubbub." Kayla answered the phone and I was all flustered saying "Kayla, are you there? Hold on one second" and ran away a few yards and told her about the creepy man. She decided she is a bad omen (last time I was on the phone with her I fell off my bike because a group of asian students quickly changed sides of the sidewalk to make way for me on the side opposite of American custom).

I kind of wonder whats wrong with this man, I see him making gestures a lot, I wonder if he understands at all.

Did I mention the raw sewage content, or the fact my boots had a hole?

2006-03-21T08:54:00.000-08:00

Last week as part of a service project on my spring break trip, we worked with the Earth Conservation Corps to clean out one of the dirtiest rivers in the nation in D.C.

There were over 300 people participating in the cleanup, but I made sure to grab some bright yellow galoshes and volunteer for the crew going in the river. For a while I trudged around the muck with a garbage bag getting cans, plastic, old shirts, and other small misc. items. Pretty soon, I realized that it was too concentrated with people and we had over a mile to clean up so I wandered down further. More and more random items started to turn up in the water. I pulled out a sleeping bag, 6 bicycles, a shopping cart, a phone booth, a vacuum cleaner, and a motorcycle.
Not to mention numerous tires and hypodermic needles.
Probably a hundred yards beyond everyone (I was really too excited to let anybody else find all the weird items) I pulled out a tire and set it up the bank on the side of the road. Two black guys in a van stopped and got out of the car, and one of them asked if they could have that tire cuz there was a problem with his own.
"Uhh...you can, but I don't think you'll want it cuz I just pulled it out of the river," I said.
"Oh. You know, its good you guys are doing this now, give it a month and you'd probably find a body in this river."
"Oh... You're scaring me, I have to go back in that water"
"Well, this is a bad area. Yeah, you'd probably find some bodies or a gun."

He bangs, he bangs, I'm wasted by the way he moves

2006-02-17T23:52:00.000-08:00

I could've totally scored a date tonight

Tonight, Kat and Marie and I were watching this coverband, Shelby's Voyage, at Mystic while a large crowd gave the above man a good 10 yards on each side to dance....like a moron.
It seemed possible this guy didn't start out all-there, but it also was apparent that a few alcoholic drinks had been hacking at his dancing moves as well. Though, quite the looker to start out with, this photo series hopes to capture his arousing square dancing moves (sensibly set to a Maroon 5 song).
However, a minute after we showed up, this guy's eyes clamped down on me. Not to boast, but for those few moments I think he thought he met his dream girl.
Amidst one of the most horrendous dance spectacles of the century, this man was attempting to eyefuck me with half the class and twice the determination of in Wedding Crashers.

Sticky Fingers

2006-02-15T23:54:00.000-08:00

As I drew a skeleton for my anthropology final to study, an old drunk man sat next to me watching at Hardtimes. He kept saying how good it was over and over (not to brag, which I am, but my skeleton drawing was quite fantastic).
He kept passing out, and eventually everybody was borrowing my cell phone to try to get him a ride home. Eventually he came to, and sat next to me telling me that he was Sticky Fingers, of CAN (Crazy Ass Niggers), the Minneapolis hip hop group. Now, I've never heard of this group, but he volunteered his autograph for when they make it big.

"Sticky Fingers. #1"

So I wasn't going to post this but...

2006-02-15T18:24:00.000-08:00

When I was looking back over previous "random people" things to catch up in here, I found the story about this guy I met at Hardtimes one night. I walked in and sat down next to a guy, who said "Hey, how are you?"
"Good you"
"Really sad, depressed"
So I was like "i'm sorry..., today just really isnt going your way I guess because there's the smaller half of a ripped $5 bill on the floor." Hhe looks at me with amazement and picked it up with a very, very excited expression. At this point I realized he was drunk, and thought '...oh the poor guy doesnt understand that the smaller part isnt worth anything.'
But then he gets very happy, runs off, and comes back 10 minutes later with the other half of the bill. Apparently, some guy that was with him made him a deal to give back the bigger half if he could find the smaller half. He was really fun and happy after that.

However, tonight I ran into him again just now.
At Royale, there's one barista that I often chat with. When I was talking to him and getting a drink, I realized that someone left a brown bag on the counter. I asked the employee whether it was from behind the counter, and he said no, and to check what was in it.
I opened up the bag and gave him a weird look while handing it over.
He opens it, does the same, and ducks below the counter to open it further. He pulls out a few small baggies with odd things in them, some looked like cookie crumbles and such, and one looked like a clear rock or a large jagged piece of salt. There were some labels in the bag, but they were odd substance labels.
After looking around the store and seeing this same guy from the $5 bill story, (dressed in very dirty clothes, holding a similar bag, and sitting by himself as his friend rushed out the door) I told him I might know whose it is. I went over to sit down next to this guy, introduced myself again, retold him about when we met at Hardtimes (he remembered the money part but not me), and mentioned that a bag similar to his was left at the counter.
He said very quickly "What was in it?!" And I said I didn't know.
He replied that he would ask his friend if it was his. However his friend never came back, and eventually he left, the employee chased after him and gave him the bag, which he accepted and said something like "Oh, you found my insence."

Cheapo generosity

2006-02-15T16:57:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving break, I was browsing CDs in cheapo. A 50sish black man on the other side of the isle is singing some jazz music out loud with the intention of getting me to look up. Finally he says "Looking for some xmas music?"
"Nope, just browsing the local music."
"You have a pretty smile, can i buy you something?"
"No thanks"
That could have been the end but instead he came around to my side, told me his deal... he's from trinidad, he is a contractor, specializing in mosiac tiling, he is also a dj for events, and his friend djs for b96.
He wanted to bring me to the studio to watch and go out to coffee. I was with Thoy, who was stompin around the store and giving us funny looks, and the guy kept saying thigns like "Oh your boyfriend is probably jealous." Anyway, he gave me his number.

YES, DIGITS!

Meet Hatem

2006-02-15T00:04:00.000-08:00

January 17, 2005, I was walking down Washington avenue late evening leaving Amanda a voicemail. I hang up my phone and the guy walking near me comes over and mentions how cold it is here, and says he’s still not used to it because where he’s from in Egypt its in the 80s. We walk for about 15 minutes together talking because he lives past my apartment and when I get there I agree to go out to coffee sometime.

He’s 24, works with stem cell research, and has lived in Egypt and a few countries in Europe. He's very interesting and I really enjoyed talking to him. We haven't hung out much but I see him around campus once in a while. He's quite an interesting fellow, I'm quite pleased.

I almost picked up a Valentine

2006-02-14T23:45:00.000-08:00

Ken: Happy Valentines day. How was your day?
Me: Good, I slept in.
Ken: Fine
Me: Uh, how was your day?
Ken: Fine! .... you look very nice today.
Me: Thank you
[pause while I try to continue in conversation with Marie]
Ken: So I hear that on Tuesdays there is a theater where you can see movies for a dollar.
Me: Yeah, actually I think you're talking about the one in Hopkins, it's cheap every night.
Ken: Yes, but usually it is two dollars, tonight it is one.
Me: Oh.
Ken: Well, would you want to go to a movie?
Me: I don't live anywhere near Hopkins, I don't think that would work.
Ken: Well I can go to many theaters
Me: I am just visiting her [Marie] and she lives in Minneapolis.
Ken: Oh are you sure you don't want to go to a movie?
Me: No, I go to Iowa State, this is too far away.
[pause while i try to talk to Marie]
Ken: So... do you want my email?
Me: Ummm... yeah.... sure, but I don't have a pen
Ken: Oh no. I don't have a pen either.
Me: Yeah.....
Ken: You look very nice tonight
Me: Thank you.
[Talks with Marie about how frequently this happens]
Me: Ken, could I take a picture with you, I have to document my social interactions for a week for a class?
Ken: Sure, should we hug?
Me: Hey Marie, do you know how to work that camera?
Ken: Should we hug?
Me: Got it? Thank you, Ken

How it all began....

2006-02-14T21:34:00.000-08:00

For years it seems I have seemed to accumulate stories of encounters with crazy, foreign, drunk, and especially old men. Why me? Nobody seems to know. Perhaps it is because I am blonde and often willing to be amused with whatever stories they bring.

Usually I feel like this happens to everybody and nobody else bothers to repeat the tale, but recently I have been convinced that just maybe... it's me.

Marie and I, over a fantastic dinner at Bryant Lake Bowl, discussed setting up a blog to track some of these stories over time. I find the idea particularily amusing just to see how often this actually happens, but also, because many of the people live quite interesting lives extremely different from those I imagine my current friends to have.

This guy, nicknamed "Samir," approached Kat, Marie, and me at Hardtimes Cafe in the late evening a few Sundays ago. He repeatedly played a multisecond clip of a 50 cent song on his cell phone speaker while we tried to study. Obviously drunk, he hovered over us for a few hours, asking Kat every other moment, "What are you studying?" Which, like the previous 400 times, happened to be Italian.

While this picture seemed to become the token photo for my strange men encounters, Kat's was much more amusing in that he was quite intentionally staring directly at her chest.