Who are the weirdest, strangest people you've ever met?
In middle school, there was a kid who kept harassing me constantly. But when you said to him, "Do your trick," he would pick his nose and eat it.
When I was in college, the neighbor had a kid brother who was maybe 9 or 10 who used to stop by occasionally. While drinking any beverage, he would always take a sip and then announce, "Aah! That's a true Coke!" He did this repeatedly. He also breakdanced out in the middle of a busy highway.
About 3 years ago, I was with a group of people in downtown Cincinnati, and some guy who was about 30 and had a squeaky, Elmo-like voice started an argument with us about politics. He claimed to be a Wall Street big shot, and that we had ruined his career. He kept threatening to beat us up if we didn't leave by a certain time. But we stuck around, and he didn't make good on his threat.
In high school, a student chewed a used wad of bubble gum (which was the size of a golf ball) that he had previously deposited in the trash can.
More later!
Also in high school, there was a student who would pass gas and then yell out, "STINK!!!"
In before Tim.
I just thought of another really weird person I forgot. Back in 6th grade, a new student came to our school in the middle of the year. He sat right behind me in literature class. He was always asking me what my favorite singers and bands were, and when I told him it was Men At Work, he started talking about how his favorite singer was Michael Jackson. From then on, Michael Jackson was all he talked about. For weeks.
Until he asked me what my favorite TV show was. I don't remember how I answered, but he started talking about how his favorite show was 'Sesame Street' - even though he was 11 or 12. He said, "I like 'Sesame Street', man." I couldn't help but bursting out laughing. The teacher was standing right next to us, and she thought it was funny too.
Then the kid started talking about how much he admired the character Luis on 'Sesame Street'. He said he was going to write fan mail to Luis. I thought he was just joking, but later I saw him carrying around a big stack of schoolbooks, and on top of it was a stamped, sealed envelope - addressed to Luis, with some address on Sesame Street, New York NY.
Our literature teacher once told me to pay no attention to that classmate, because "he isn't half as smart as he thinks he is."
I never saw this schoolmate again after 6th grade, except once I saw him on a public bus when we were about 16.
This year, there's this recurring guy I'll see around school, and he's..err...interesting.. :biggrin:
One time, in the middle of my Video Production class, he just walked right in while the teacher was teaching and was all like "Heeeyyyy A.J.!!!" and he kept hounding A.J. (a guy in the class) about meeting him somewhere at 7 that night. You can assume the teacher was not happy. Ever since then I've occasionally seen him hanging around in/near Video Production before class starts. One time in the halls I also saw someone "milking" his braids like his hair is a cow utter, and he just continued walking doing some funky dances to Lord knows whatever he was listening to on those big bulky beats (which he is always wearing).
Also, in my Spanish class, there's a guy named Miguel (and this guy is not all that weird, but sometimes he does the weirdest things). One time at the start of class the teacher said "Buenas tardes" (which means good afternoon) and Miguel schreeches out "Buenas noches!!!!" (which means good night). Another time, a guy in the class named T.J. (though no one knew his real name was Thomas until this happened) was sleeping in class, and the teacher told "Thomas" to wake up. Everyone was confused briefly, but then Miguel starts screaming out, "Thomas the Choo-choo Train! There's dos then cuatro then seis then ocho!" And he does all sorts of other crazy stuff in that class. But I'm pretty sure he can help it, because a lot of the time he is perfectly normal and does his work.
Guess that's just High School...a bunch of mind-numbing work, and some real tummy-ticklers.
A friend of a friend who came to see a movie with us. Full-blown tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist, government is the enemy, etc. Doesn't have Internet because he doesn't trust it yet claims to be a hacker. I'm a software engineer so I questioned him and concluded that he has no idea what he's talking about.
...is this thread relevant at all?
Quote from: bandit957 on January 21, 2015, 03:00:23 AMWhen I was in college, the neighbor had a kid brother who was maybe 9 or 10 who used to stop by occasionally. While drinking any beverage, he would always take a sip and then announce, "Aah! That's a true Coke!" He did this repeatedly.
If this was 1985, there was good reason for such.
(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fen%2Ff%2Ffa%2FNew_Coke_can.jpg&hash=749198b6ff8a0de68633503825466823af99467a)
Mid-way through that year, Coca-Cola made one of the most disastrous marketing decisions of all time.
Back to the topic at hand:
In junior high & high school, there was this one guy that would literally charge towards the cafeteria just before lunch. Any bystanders that had the misfortune to stand in his path (he was big guy) was easily knocked over. Think bowling ball knocking down a set of pins.
I thought of another serial weirdo from college. NKU had a small food court back then, and there was a young man who was frequently seen eating there. He was a total slob. He would stuff huge piles of salad into his mouth, and lettuce and dressing would fly out everywhere.
One day, I was eating alone in the food court, and he just decided to sit down at my table for no apparent reason. Then he asked to borrow my notebook so he could draw a picture of a guy who he claimed was a hybrid of Bill Clinton and Elvis Presley saying, "Thank you very much!"
He was weird!
Are we referring to those inside or outside of this hobby? :rofl:
Being in the local journalism business for about 15 years brought me in contact with a lot of, er, um, interesting characters.
One claimed to be some sort of entrepreneur, world traveler, confidant to Bush 41, mastermind behind the first Gulf War, and all sorts of other laughable statements. The newspaper owner threw him out of the office on more than one occasion, and Sen. Mitch McConnell dressed him down during a town hall meeting after he got up and made a bunch of his trademark outlandish claims.
Another was this ne'er-do-well who claimed to own a fleet of classic cars, having been married a bunch of times to all these beautiful women, and all sorts of other tall tales. Yet he could never produce a picture of said ex-wives or the cars. His nickname was "Fonzie" and one year as a joke, some of the local townspeople convinced him to run for sheriff, and they signed his candidacy papers and gave him the money to file. His campaign slogan was, "Let Fonzie Be Your Fuzz."
For some reason, local newspaper offices seem to be magnets for these types of folks.
When I was growing up, there was a middle-aged woman who kept getting thrown out of local restaurants for being loud and obnoxious. I saw her quite a bit in the late '80s. I heard that she used to go into a local bowling alley and throw bowling balls at people who kept harassing her.
I know a guy who asked a girl out who he really liked that turned him down, so he promptly asked both her roommates out after that (who also declined).
When I was in 8th grade or maybe high school, there was some kid at my school who cut a photo of Cybill Shepherd out of a magazine and claimed it was his mom.
I knew a guy in college who could pass for Shaggy from Scooby Doo. Anyhow, though we were in our early 20s (this was early or mid-90s), he was stuck in the 70s, and obsessed with Indian culture. He was a film student and he could probably name every movie ever made.
I know of a guy who actually talks too much. I mean the guy never shuts up and he talks about himself constantly to others and he rides a bike because for some reason he is not allowed to operate a motor vehicle. He even loves to talk to the high school girls at our church and when we have a fund raiser at a local Publix to raise money for the Menatally Challenged, he loves to talk to the Girl Scouts when they are also selling their cookies at the same time.
Many others who know him say that he does not have the MO to cross the line to go further with young girls, only that he likes to talk in general. However, the man is married to a mentally challenged girl and has been for 18 years. He loves to brag about being married as well to everyone he knows, but at social gatherings he ignores his wife completely. To me he is beyond weird. Oh yes, and he has one fingernail that he purposely grows long to about two inches and wears his reading glasses especially when he is not reading!
Many people excuse his behavior because he is mentally ill for real. One person says that he is mentally challenged himself. Another says that he was injured once in his life and suffered brain damage as a result of his injury. Then others just think he is just plain loco. Whatever, the nature of his offbeat behavior I think he is weird.
The weirdest person I've met is myself. :)
Other than that, I'd have to say a guy I knew in middle school. We were actually somewhat good friends, but that was mostly due to us considering ourselves outcasts. I think he had a slightly more severe form of autism than I did.
Same for me; the oddest person I know is myself. I'm an introverted nonconformist who manages to be atypical in just about every way. I'm also an empath and am starting to be convinced that I have latent psychic powers. I'm very perceptive when it comes to society and the universe at large and recently have been pondering such questions as "what is 'God'" (quotes included for a reason), "what is the structure of the universe/multiverse and how did it form" and "can the soul reincarnate/how often does it happen/can a soul evolve into an angel or demon". I also have very strong core values centered around fairness and would like to launch a global crusade against greed and bigotry.
Ditch thy motorist privilege, heathen.
I can think of any number of weird people I've MET. Then there are weird people I have encountered online, such as on this site (I won't name any names), but they don't count because I have never actually met anyone from this site (that I know of, anyway). Based on what I know about a few members of this forum, I can think of two (again, I won't name names) who would immediately jump right up the list if I ever actually met them (and no, ethanman62187 is not one of them).
In terms of weird people I KNOW WELL, the weirdest is probably a fellow who refuses to get an E-ZPass because he believes doing so would mean he would be supporting the WMATA Silver Line project (or "Dulles Rail" as he usually calls it). I have no problem with opposing the Silver Line, but to me it makes no sense whatsoever to refuse to get an E-ZPass, and thus waste immense amounts of time waiting on line at toll plazas, over that issue, given that the majority of tolls you pay with it don't go to the Dulles Rail project. This is the same fellow I think I mentioned in another thread who drives 40 miles roundtrip to put gas in his car because the price per gallon is cheaper in Manassas, never mind that he wastes more money in gas burned roundtrip than he saves due to the lower price. He went to get his car's oil changed recently and he said something about needing to go to an auto parts store to get the oil to take with him. That one baffled me. I've never heard of bringing the new oil with you when you get an oil change! Normally the mechanic provides it and charges you for it.
He's one of those people who means well and who's on the whole an honest and upstanding guy but who has strange ideas of which he refuses to be disabused.
Quote from: NE2 on January 22, 2015, 02:37:23 PM
Ditch thy motorist privilege, heathen.
<sigh>
Short version: I just don't like the "pedestrians and cyclists should be more equal than everyone else" attitude that many bike/ped advocates have
Long version: Let's try not to derail this thread...
My fairness values include a component where I believe that one should never so much as inconvenience another person ever (and I'm the first to admit that I'm not perfect on this either and the guilt weighs on me). Applied to driver/pedestrian interactions, we get to an interesting paradox where it can be (and often is) possible for no such equitable resolution to exist. In those cases, we need to take the system of all involved parties and select the resolution that introduces the minimum amount of inconvenience across the whole system. For example, say we have a driver and a pedestrian who are both approaching a crosswalk and close enough that they would get to it at the same time. Say the pedestrian waits for the car to go by. The pedestrian waits two seconds and the driver doesn't wait at all. Total wait time across the system: 2 seconds. Now say that the driver stops so the pedestrian can cross. The pedestrian waits 5 seconds (to verify that the driver is slowing down/stopping to let him cross and won't run him over), and the driver waits anywhere from 5-15 seconds depending on the speed of the pedestrian. Total wait time across the system: minimum of 10 seconds. Clearly this is the less equitable solution.
Now, the scenario gets interesting if, instead of one car, you have a whole line. In that case, the wait time for the pedestrian can become burdensome. This is when it would be nice to let them go, as it is not fair for someone to be shut off from crossing just because traffic happens to be high. This is also why pedestrian signals were invented.
I also don't like any solution to a problem that only treats symptoms instead of getting to the root. So, if lots of pedestrians are darting into traffic and motorists can't slow down in time, I'd rather that the pedestrians stop darting into traffic rather than the speed limit be reduced. People might say that the darting is inevitable in urban settings, but my answer to that (and similar argument on any issue of any kind) is that if we, as a species, put out minds to something, then nothing is impossible. This is why I will always try to bring humanity closer to a Utopian society: not only do I believe that it's possible with enough willpower, but I also believe that it's my destiny to set humanity down that path.
I'm also convinced that I will someday create a true, consistent, and coherent narrative unifying science with spirituality. Ambitious, yes, but that's who I am. ;)
The root is that people are driving cars in urban settings. Duh.
Yawn. There is nobody that isn't really weird. You just don't know what is really weird about everyone. Dwelling on surface weirdness is kind of easy and boring.
Quote from: Pete from Boston on January 23, 2015, 03:46:35 PM
Yawn. There is nobody that isn't really weird. You just don't know what is really weird about everyone. Dwelling on surface weirdness is kind of easy and boring.
True you cannot judge a book by it's outside cover is the old cliche. Some gorgeous blondes that you think are so hot end up being the most crude people you ever want to meet. Then you meet a girl who is not so attractive and then turns out to be the most prettiest girl you have ever met in your entire life.
Just like bosses we tend to think are goof offs and some do give you the impression that all they do is watch their employees work and point out their mistakes or to be enforcers of the company rules, however many really are not. To most managers and supervisors the last thing they really want to do is actually keep up after their employees and have to consistently remind them of their paid duties, as many have a department to run as any business has more than just supervising and paperwork. To keep after an employee who slacks off or takes shortcuts from doing their work is a distraction to them, unless you are Larry and you work for a commercial laundry in Orlando, Florida who is just one to watch his subordinates work either on camera or by walking around the plant and also actually never takes care of usual management duties of a manager and even actually gets away with it. However, ole Larry is the exception and not the norm in this case.
There was a really weird kid in grade school who intentionally defecated on the toilet seat, prompting the teachers to lecture the entire student body about it. During this lecture, the student tearfully confessed. Also, one day in math class, this student sat there reading a book about football from the school library (instead of doing his class work). Then he saw a beautiful color photo in the book of a really great play and said he was going to cut the photo out of the book and hang it on his wall. Then the teacher warned him not to, since it was the school's book. Later, I found this book in the library and noticed that this photo had indeed been cut out. This student also referred to McDonald's as "McDoodle's".
Also in grade school, there was a student who referred to Kentucky Fried Chicken as "Kentucky Fried Blicken". And there was a student who referred to the MGM lion as the "MFL lion" (which stood for "MFing lion"). I don't know why he was talking so much about the MGM lion in the first place.
^^ Sounds like a case for the Hardly Boys (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_of_the_Urinal_Deuce)! Maybe there was a raging clue they could go on. :-D
Quote from: bandit957 on January 23, 2015, 05:22:43 PM
Also in grade school, there was a student who referred to Kentucky Fried Chicken as "Kentucky Fried Blicken".
Hmmm, how about Kentucky Fried McMicken?
I'm not going to say who, but this person posts to this forum and I've met them in real life.
Quote from: bugo on January 23, 2015, 11:18:57 PM
I'm not going to say who, but this person posts to this forum and I've met them in real life.
Does it waft?
When I was in grade school, there was a slightly older kid on the school bus who meant to say, "I'm gonna laugh if it snows," but he accidentally said, "I'm gonna snow if it laughs."
But he may have been a Roads Scholar. I remember one day when he insisted that the bus driver drive up a newly constructed road. The driver obliged.
Try working a graveyard shift at a fast food chain and meet some of the customers after hours.
I had a neighbor once who was obsessed with earwigs. Every time I saw him, he kept talking about how he used to live in a remote town that was overrun by earwigs. He'd always say, "There's these bugs called earwigs, man. They get down in your ears, man, and they hatch. And then you can't get rid of 'em, man. You have to go to the doctor, man." He always said "man" after every sentence.
A couple of people from college I thought of...
There was a guy who used to wear a trench coat even when it was hot outside. One morning, he came into the cafeteria wearing a dress, high-heeled shoes and makeup. His female companion wore a tuxedo with the cummerbund.
Then there was a young woman who carried an Edward Scissorhands doll everywhere! I'm not kidding when I say everywhere because she and that doll were never, ever separated. I had a chance to talk with her and she was a nice girl. The reason she carried the doll around was because she met Johnny Depp around the time he was shooting the movie and he gave her the doll.
Late during my time at James Madison University (senior year or so I think), I started hearing that a female student was dressing like the university's namesake, along with speaking in a manner reminiscent of the time he lived in. I eventually did get to see her in person, and the news about her mode of dress were correct. I cannot confirm or deny her speaking however, since I never heard her say a word.
My late brother, who suffered from an assortment of mental disabilities, learning disabilities and more, remains the weirdest person I have ever met, but I miss him every day (he died at the age of 49).
Does looking in the mirror count? :crazy:
I knew a guy who was at least 1/4 Choctaw who hated Native Americans.
Myself, and everyone else in my classroom. I'm the ultimatum of the entire classroom, being the oddball roadgeek, writing stories on my free time, and obliging to read books. I always would fill myself with knowledge, and don't really talk to anybody. I'm quiet, but will oblige to do things for people or give them the cold shoulder. And I can be talkative. So, as a result, I made myself smarter, but a big blow is that I'm REALLY lonely.
Quote from: bugo on May 21, 2015, 07:20:48 AM
I knew a guy who was at least 1/4 Choctaw who hated Native Americans.
As one of Cherokee/Osage (and possible Shawnee or Delaware/Lenape) descent, I will never involve myself or associate with racists or bigots. I never knew who will hate minorities in 2015, or hate Jews or other religions, LGBT people, men who hate women (or vice versa), or the disabled, be it mentally or physically. Hatred and bigotry is based on ignorance and fear of the different involving social groups of people. I won't say I'm part American Indian to anyone I don't know, including to anyone I know for sure is an American Indian and a member of a federally recognized tribal nation. I'm technically white/Caucasian and my father is from France, so I say I'm half-French plus Flemish-Belgian-Dutch, and has English, Scottish, maybe Irish, some German ancestry and whatever is in my genes going back millions of years of family or human history.
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/That_kid_who_wears_his_headphones_around_his_neck]
I had to mention this.
Quote from: Mike D boy on June 18, 2015, 06:30:01 PM
Quote from: bugo on May 21, 2015, 07:20:48 AM
I knew a guy who was at least 1/4 Choctaw who hated Native Americans.
As one of Cherokee/Osage (and possible Shawnee or Delaware/Lenape) descent, I will never involve myself or associate with racists or bigots. I never knew who will hate minorities in 2015, or hate Jews or other religions, LGBT people, men who hate women (or vice versa), or the disabled, be it mentally or physically. Hatred and bigotry is based on ignorance and fear of the different involving social groups of people. I won't say I'm part American Indian to anyone I don't know, including to anyone I know for sure is an American Indian and a member of a federally recognized tribal nation. I'm technically white/Caucasian and my father is from France, so I say I'm half-French plus Flemish-Belgian-Dutch, and has English, Scottish, maybe Irish, some German ancestry and whatever is in my genes going back millions of years of family or human history.
I'm a Euro-mutt and while I'm interested in ethnic studies and racial differences, I do not discriminate on the grounds of race, sexual orientation, etc. I do, however, discriminate against morons because I can't stand to be around stupid folks.
I'm more of a liability than an asset. I am the opposite of most people I know for some reason, and am really atypical of the majority of my race. I stick to my core values but can flip flop if needed. I'm weird but interesting.
In my hometown, I remember a homeless drifter who took the local transit busses and for years, there was a man who represented Christmas: "I'm the spirit of Christmas" all year round and he's dressed like Santa Claus. He would talk to passengers and drivers, and at times, he almost would get in trouble. One time I heard from a friend of mine, the "spirit of Christmas" was caught talking to a pregnant woman in the back row of the bus and this man encountered him with concern, the "spirit of Christmas" greeted him with a Christian greeting and the man said "We're Jewish", so he said "Happy Hanukah" to him and decidedly to leave him and his wife alone. Another friend of mine said the man was traumatized from the time he was a child, his parents abandoned him and they drove off to leave him in his own home on Christmas, and he later was adopted in foster care. He was also a born-again Christian and wanted to connect Santa Claus' giving to children with Jesus Christ, which is a reason for his odd, yet holiday cheer, all year round.