Strange Things That Have Been Said to Me

“Sean, that’s a pretty racist-looking coconut.”

As a person who’s known a lot of interesting people, I have had a lot of strange things said to me over the years. I only just recently started writing them down, so the list isn’t as long as it should be. For the sake of argument but mostly just for fun, I’ll bounce a few of them off of you now.

This first quote I credit to Kris, who was commenting on a souvenir carved coconut gorilla head I bought in Florida. The coconut, by the way, is in no way racist. The only reason she made this observation was because I recently put a top hat on it that suddenly made it look like it was supposed to be a player in a minstrel show. This was certainly inadvertent on my part and it hadn’t occurred to me that the addition of a hat could make a gorilla look like a man in blackface makeup, but once it was pointed out to me I guess I could see where the observation was in some way valid. Due to a lack of intent on the part of the coconut carver and myself, I didn’t see a need to remedy the situation.

“Please move your sweet onions to the bag,” said the register at the self-checkout of the grocery store. It just sounded funny to hear it in such a pleasant artificial voice.

At DragonCon one year a guy stumbled up to me, slung his arm around my shoulders, and announced in a delightfully Southern drunken drawl: “I’m immune to fire!” Then he quickly walked on down the hall and made his exit before I could really put together what had just happened.

And the whole experience was so brilliantly executed I thought, at the encouragement of my friends, this is the kind of thing that could really catch on.

The drunken drive-by, perfectly conceived in the model this guy created, would have to be performed thusly: You must be alone (and preferably drunk), you have to enter the presence of strangers, remain silent, then drop the payload (any nonsensical declaration will do, but it’d be easier to track the progress of this movement if you just stick with “I’m immune to fire”), then make a quick exit.

You’d have to have your entrance and exit strategy prepared beforehand, I suppose, because this is a blackout gag. It only works if you can disappear afterwards.

When I related this story to my buddy Wilson later on, his response was funnier than the story itself:

“I’m totally guilty of that shit,” Wilson confessed. “I always think that it’s someone I know, but then it occurs to me when I get no response that this is a total fucking stranger. I’ll make some announcement like, ‘I’ve got a tater tot microphone’ loudly in their ear (and yet I’m leaned in close like I’m gonna whisper). When I get the awkward silence, I find it best to follow up with the coup de grace.... grab their nuts and whisper quietly in their ear, ‘whatta ya think about that?’ ZANG!”

I can think of no one better to spearhead the Weird It Forward movement than my friend Wilson.

But getting back to my original point, the best random weird thing anyone’s ever said to me was said at a backwoods barbeque out in the Georgia swamps. It will more than likely remain at the top of the list for quite some time. Least I hope so.

“We should probably get the baby off the floor if there’s going to be an alligator in here.”

And that story, I think, I’m going to have to relate to you in toto…

TO BE CONTINUED!