I have a tendency to hang my glasses, sun or reading, on the front of my collar, when they're not in use. It's probably not that beautiful a look, but it leaves them at my immediate disposal.
I was doing some organizing last night, and stopped what I was doing to run out for office supplies. Reading glasses on the front of my tank top, I pulled into the Walmart parking lot, and while looking for a space, released my seatbelt.
As the seltbelt retracted, it hooked my glasses and flung them right out the window, on to the parking lot. What a surprise! Driving one way, I was forced to keep going, then hoof it back to look for my glasses, hoping they wouldn't be crushed by the cars behind me.
It's odd to be moving about your life, minding your own business, only to find yourself, the next minute, wandering around a parking lot like a superdork, looking for your reading glasses. Still, if I'm going to fall victim to a freak accident, this is the sort I'd choose; it's preferable to, say, a piano falling on my head.
What about you? Ever experience a freak incident that suddenly left you somewhere you just didn't expect to be?
Tell me.
I was handcuffed by the ATF back in 1979... I REALLY didn't expect that!
ReplyDeleteSeveral years ago, my former bf and I traveled out west on a motorcycle. I was wearing a "magnetic" necklace - black marquesite-type beads that were, well, magnetic. While waiting in line at a gas/convenience store counter, the necklace inexplicably broke, scattering little beads...not all over the place...but straight to the bottom of the giant pickle barrel I was standing next to. So, I found an envelope and crawled around the bottom of this pickle barrel looking for little beads. Some had, of course, scattered, so I kept crawling around on all fours around people's feet until I think I had them all! Five or six years later they're holding stuff onto my refrigerator.
ReplyDeleteYou know you've reached that certain age when you totally "get" reading glasses stories....mine are either on my head or on my shirt or one pair I even use a little old lady chain. I keep a spare in my purse...in a meeting the other day, a guy fumbled around in his pockets until I told him, I have a spare, but they're gonna be pink. No problem. He put on the pink glasses.
When I saw "Wal-Mart" I thought, oops, I'll get a phone call any minute!
ReplyDeleteI took a wrong track when out hiking once and ended up lost for 24 hours so that's my contribution of being somewhere I didn't want to be!
LOL! Hope you found your glasses in one piece.
ReplyDeleteMine was a li'l more friekier in that I was riding a motor scooter at high speeds when one of the tyres suddenly slipped off! After the intital shock I stood up with just little bruises.Could hardly believe myself !
I once found myself on a the hood of a honda civic racing around on an icy parking lot by freak 'accident.'
ReplyDeleteA couple of yahoos tried to pull a dine-n-dash and the waitress ran after them. She had them cornered in the parking lot and they started bumping her out of the way. I ran out to help... but apparently I just have one of those personalities that encourages vehicular homicide attempts (who knew?). They gunned it... and I have a permanent honda civic impression/scar on my shin.
Fortunately when they sped off and I went flying off the hood I slid across ice instead of asphalt... always a silver lining, right?
They were kind enough to stop a ways up the road, turn around, come back and yell at me for cracking their windshield. They stuck around to tell the cops all about it.
Made me feel less idiotic in comparison for thinking I made an effective car-blocker. Even if just slightly.
not really. but I enjoyed reading yours!
ReplyDeleteStF: What did you DO? Ahem. Rest of the story, por favor.
ReplyDeleteBettycat: Ha! Necklace in bits and stuck to a pickle barrel. Reminds me of the defrag window on my computer, for some reason.
Oh, the reading glasses blogs I could do...hmmm
Dogbait: Lost for 24 hours. I'd be dead from it.
AlwaysHappy: Gah! That would be a shocker! Glad you lived to tell the story here.
Glock: You have the most exciting stories. I imagine being across the hood of a car would be a surprising turn of events. And hilarious that the hoodlums came back to lodge a complaint.
Wendy: Ok. Let me know when you end up there. Gotta happen someday, yes?
I was in the loo in Nepal on a trek. There was a composting toilet (i.e. do your business, add some leaves from the pile - surprisingly one of the least smelly toilets I used) I had my sunglassed on my t-shirt.
ReplyDeleteNow this toilet was of the croucing variety, somehow my sunglasses fell in.
Down they went, down down into the pile of leaves all those feet below.
Leaving them there was not an option, you can't be without sunglasses at that altitude. Luckily there was a hatch for emptying the compost. We managed to hook them and drag them to us, rescue and wash them.
If Mr. Jazz hadn't been there I proably would have just left them.
Back in the '70s I used to work in the summers at a huge fireworks stand. In the Fall of '79 I had been laid-off from my job as a rubber tester. I had a gf in college at the time and I wanted to make some spare cash so I could take her out over the Thanksgiving break. The guy who owned the fireworks business had been approached by a couple of guys asking to buy M-80s. He agreed to sell them something like a 100 cases (500 per case). He offered me $20 to help transfer the fireworks from his pickup to their truck. So I'm there helping out and these two guys are saying, "hey, can't we get in trouble for this... yada, yada". The next thing I know, about four cars pull up and armed ATF agents jump out and detain us and question us for a couple of hours. The guys making the buy were undercover ATF agents and were wired. I was detained but not arrested and the owner was eventually convicted of 2 counts of unsafe storage of fireworks. I was 23 at the time and scared poopless at having guns pointed at me and being handcuffed.
ReplyDeleteAah, stfarmer's story just reminded me.....in 1985 I traveled to Philadelphia with a friend I worked with at Clinton Power Station. We drove straight through and got in very late at night, but he wanted to drive around a bit since he hadn't been home in five years. I was dozing in the passenger seat when he apparantly ran a red light, spotted by some undercover cops on a stakeout. Instead of pulling over, he woke me up and said "Switch places". So, wearing a long coat and really not thinking about it first, I managed to switch places with the driver of a Dodge Omni (think of the logistics here). Oh, yeah, the guy had lost his DL in Illinois for a DUI. And we had empty beer bottles, a half-bottle of root beer schnapps (ugh) and some miscellaneous contraband in the glove box. And the Philadephia police were approaching my door with their guns drawn. They put us up against the car and patted us down, and I had a camera on a strap on my hip under my coat. "Call for a female officer for a search". No, I said, it's just a camera, reaching for it. "Don't touch that" (gun) "OK"(hands in the air). We'd already driven past the Philadelphia Women's Prison, and I really believed I was going to end up there. They found all the illegalities, and young cop was ready to run us in, when old cop started to ask some questions. Like why (no license) why driving around late at night in a questionable neighborhood in an Omni from Illinois (haven't been home in five years) Old cop: (obvious Irish brogue)....Aaaah, where ya from son? "sixth and pike". "aaaah, things have changed. Your parents still there?" "yeah, fifty years"....and so on. I was dumbfounded. He let us go. He took the booze and the "other stuff" and let. us. go. "Have a good visit son. And let her do the driving".
ReplyDeleteJazz: What a predicament; thank god for the leaves. Fishing from a toilet is definitely worse than wandering around a parking lot!
ReplyDeleteStF: Ok. Sudden handcuffs are never good. I like the "heyyyy, can't we get in trouble for this?" line.
Bettycat: Wow! A lucky day for you-- did you grab a lotto ticket while you were at it?
I've been away and missed all the fun, but for the record: one Sunday at university some friends and I went shopping at an outlet village in Portsmouth. No shopping was done, but we did end up drunk at 3am teaching the Portsmouth Uni rugby team how to ballet dance in their living room. Certainly not how I expected the day to end.
ReplyDelete