I was on a National Express coach from Newcastle to Edinburgh, years ago, and a couple stops in this guy stows a mountain bike in the luggage compartment, gets on the bus and it’s pretty full so he ends up sitting next to me.
We chatted for the whole trip, he was telling me about how he’d just spent the last couple of days biking across the country, it was just a really nice pleasant encounter with no awkwardness or anything, which as you can imagine since I’m on Lemmy is not a normal occurrence for me.
At one point I started to feel travel sick, which I think freaked him out a bit at first, but I’d come prepared with some minty sweets to keep it at bay which I of course shared with my new friend.
He got off the coach before we reached Edinburgh, and I remember sitting there watching him retrieve his bike and wave up at me to say goodbye, and I realised…we never even introduced ourselves. Like, not even first names. And I don’t know if it was the mild delirium of the travel sickness but I was just hit with this wave of existential realisation that I’d never see this person again ever in my life.
It wasn’t a romantic thing or anything, he was just canny and it’s weird we didn’t exchange any info!
I think about National Express Bike Bloke on a fairly regular basis. Hope he’s had a happy life.
I was about 13 at the time and on a family vacation. My parents were in a store shopping and I was bored so I went to stand outside. I’m standing out there and this very old, very fat, very short man (he looked a lot like Danny devito) walks up to me and says “Aren’t you just the cutest.” He then pinches my cheek and walks away. I’ll never forget him.
I was ready for this to go way worse.
Plot twist: that was Danny DeVito
Old man gave me a friendly wink at the mall once in the '90s, and I felt like I was just the coolest member of the club.
When i was fourteen and on vacation in sardegna,on a boat trip with my family i saw this girl i absolutely fell in love with. Never talked to her, never saw her again. Still remember her face.
When I was a lonely teenager/young adult, I used to have intensely vivid dreams about meeting imaginary girls. I’d spend what felt like hours with them, maybe days, often falling in love over the duration of these dreams out on beautiful beaches or vistas, and really committing their faces to memory. Then I’d wake up, and all at once they’d be ripped away from me. I’d remember their face, their voice, the presence, but I’d be wholly alone again and confronted with this strange and bittersweet reality where I felt as though I had lost someone important who never even existed. Just this fabrication of my own mind that crushed me for maybe an hour before their memory slowly evaporated and ceased to matter, much like any other dream from the night before.
I haven’t experienced that since young adulthood, though. Can’t say that I’d want to, either. It’s wild that you experienced that scenario in person.
I was 18 and riding on a train in Salt Lake City in 1999 or 2000. There was this girl with her friends on the other end of the car and she was knitting. We made eye contact and she smiled. My friend urged me to go talk to her but I was too intimidated.
One of those “what if” moments…
I once saw this stranger almost trip in public and then look around if anyone saw it.
I did and I will always remember. I think about you every night.
A homeless man held the door open for me at a pizza place. He didn’t ask for any money or have a sign or anything. Just made himself useful, presumably in hopes that some of the customers would show him an act of kindness in return. It was the first time I gave someone money. He also took a q-tip out of his pocket and somehow used it to relight a half-smoked cigarette out of the ashtray.
I saw a stranger riding a bicycle along the gravel trail surrounding the reflecting pool of the Lincoln Memorial in DC. He was kitted out like a tour de Francer and was riding way too fast for being in a crowded area. So inevitably some tourist steps into his path. Instead of hitting her he threw the bike to the ground and launched himself over the handlebars, landing with a perfect shoulder roll. He dusted himself off, asked if the tourist was alright, and zoomed off into the twilight with his bicycle.
So he perfectly diffused a dangerous situation that was entirely of his own creation. I’ve never known exactly how to feel about that random dude that was simultaneously super talented and super irresponsible. I’ll never forget that random ass dude and his midlife crisis sprint bike.
That’s some Artie, Strongest Man in the World shit.
That’s a perfect comparison.
