People Are Interesting

I think at one point I had said that I would post weekly about the interesting people I run across in my travels, but that certainly hasn't been happening.  Can we call it a 'regular feature' if I don't post regularly about it, but post occasionally about it?  :-)

Anyway, I have come across some real characters in the past week.  Hopefully my descriptions will do them justice:

1.  "Flex Horton" - There is a brand new fixture at our neighbourhood Tim Hortons.  I don't know his name, but what I do know about him is that he sure likes to flex.  This guy has been standing in front of our Tim Hortons for 3 days straight now, wearing the same outfit every day:  black parachute pants, black fanny pack, black muscle tank top, and black sunglasses.  He has a black barbed wire tattoo around his right bicep, and he spends pretty much all of his time (as far as I can determine) flexing his guns for the ladies.  He does a bicep curl, holds it, looks at it, and looks around to see who's looking.  It is awesome.  My friend Sara from my days in residence may remember "Yogen-huge" from the Yogen Fruz at the student centre... he was a lot like that guy.  Yogen-huge wore a similar ensemble, and whenever you bought a frozen yogurt, he would watch his bicep flex in the reflection of the yogurt press as he pulled down on the lever to create your frozen treat for you.  Soooo entertaining!  Anyway, I think I'll call my new friend at Tim's "Flex Horton".

2.  "Surly Sally" - The woman who was driving the shuttle van for our Dodge dealership drove me home today after I dropped our Dodge Caravan off for repairs.  She seemed a little rough around the edges, and this was confirmed for me when she started going on, and on, and on, and ON about how much she doesn't like Dodge Caravans.  She said she hates them, and she only says nice things about them when she's working because she works for a Dodge dealer, but that she really hates them and that she thinks no one in their right mind would buy one.  The whole time I'm thinking:  "but you ARE working... right this very instant!"  Me and the other Dodge Caravan owner who were being shuttled home by this woman just looked at each other and kind of shrugged.  It was so weird.  Don't people think about what they are saying anymore?

3.  "The Scary People in the Corner" - Ok, maybe Tim Hortons draws a disproportionate amount of interesting people, or maybe I just spend too much time there, but either way, I am still afraid of the gang of people who were sitting in the corner of Tim Hortons today.  For some reason, the staff had run out of eggs for their breakfast sandwiches when I arrived, so I was instructed to sit down and wait.  So, I sat down and waited.  And as I waited, I started to eavesdrop... as I am VERY prone to do.  These people have the most frightening family dynamics I have ever heard of!  The one woman was loudly sharing this gem of a story:

"So then I was so pissed that I grabbed Dad by the neck and choke slammed him onto the driveway and he got up and lunged at me and I pushed him back down and said to him, 'yeah... how do you like that, Dad?  I guess that's what you get for teaching your daughter how to fight back!'.  He sure as hell backed off after that!"

This was met with great whoops and hollers of approval from her table mates.  Meanwhile, one table over, I was trying desperately to look nonchalant and disinterested.  Not sure it was working.  As this was going on, the woman's little girl (couldn't have been more than 3 years old) was standing off to my left, staring intently at me with her face about a foot away from mine.  I finally turned and looked at her and she stared for a moment longer and then wandered off.  That in itself was strange.

Then, another woman at the table starts talking about how she looks nothing like her brother.  She is pounding her fist on the table at one point, emphatic about how much it bothers her that people say they look similar.  Then the choke slamming woman pipes up and says, "You are in denial and you need to hear this.  You and your brother look identical.  I know you don't want to hear that you look like a dude, but it's best you hear it from me.... you look just like him, so just drop it!"

What the...?  What a weird moment.  I was a little worried I was going to see some fisticuffs.  :-)

4.  "The Chives Aficionado" - I was trying to leave Rona a few days ago with Kaycie barely in tow.  I had a cart full of stuff and she just would not stay close to me.  I had to push my cart down a short stretch of a busy part of the parking lot before we got to our van, and keeping Kaycie by my side was consuming every bit of my energy.  As I was desperately trying to drag her back to the cart, without letting my wonky cart drift into oncoming traffic, this woman starts grilling me about the stuff in my cart... and it was all chive related questions.  "Where did you get those chives?  Are those lemon chives?  Do you eat a lot of chives?  Do they have more chives inside?  Where do you plant your chives?  How often do you water chives?"  I have never been so close to screaming at a perfect stranger in my entire life.  I suppose that had to do with the brink of insanity to which my daughter had successfully pushed me that morning, but still - isn't that an unusual amount of chive questions to be asking a stranger?  And didn't she notice that I was losing my battle with Kaycie is a super-spectacular fashion?  Everyone else in the parking lot noticed that I might as well be trying to stuff an octopus into a mesh bag with all of the success I was having in corralling my daughter... why couldn't this woman notice?  I somehow eventually extracted myself from the chive line of questioning and got to the car without losing my daughter or any of my chives!

Well... that's it for now.  I'll keep my eyes peeled for more interesting people... the summer seems to always draw them out of the woodwork!