I have an odd talent I’m not sure you’re aware of. For some reason, wherever I go, weird things find me. Here’s an example. I stopped at a red light while making my way home one day and happened to glance over at a guy standing on the corner. He was looking right at me, and we totally made eye contact. Not noteworthy at all, except that he had HALF A MUSTACHE. He had like, a straight-up Reno 911 ‘stache, except he had shaved off the right half of it. Why do I always see stuff like that? I have come to the conclusion that it’s just me, and I am just awesome enough that the universe presents me with these regularly scheduled glimpses of the wackier side of mankind. It must be just me, because it’s rare that people ever tell ME stories like this. So it made me think, “Who can I tell this to? Who will believe it?”
Why is it me who sees the half mustache guy? And the guy peeing on the bush, in full view of traffic? Why am I the one who finds weed on the playground? Why does everyone drive by the dead bird, but it only flaps its wing hello when I drive past it? Why am I the one who gets approached in the street by the barefoot, shirtless, singing man at a blogger event? It’s like I have Obscure And Useless Radar. I always seem to pick up on the quirky, weird shit that nobody else ever mentions. But, just ask my husband, I’ll walk past a scrap of paper on the floor for two days until he yells at everyone that nobody ever notices anything but him. I didn’t even see that piece of paper! Really!
Thankfully, I have two witnesses who will corroborate the weirdest tale of all, Spaghetti Guy. I was driving my teenager and her best friend somewhere one afternoon when we passed a guy at the bus stop who was eating a full plate of spaghetti – on an actual, ceramic plate – with a spoon. He was angry, too, yelling at the bus as it approached, like he was angry he didn’t have time to finish his spaghetti. Probably angry at himself, too, that he grabbed a spoon instead of a fork when he decided to leave his house carrying a dinnerplate. We all just looked at one another, like, is this really happening? You see it too, right?
Do weird things like this happen to you, too? Am I just the only one who notices them?
A variation of this post originally appeared in 2011 on LaLaGirl.org
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