Something unexpected that made you go "wtf??"

Just remembered another one.. Late at night in Aldeburgh in Suffolk. Pre me having a mobile phone. As we were driving home from the cinema about 10.30pm we saw a man walking down the street with a balaclava over his face with the eye holes cut out. Couldn't ring the police till we got home.. Often wondered what he was up to!!

In London in the 70's, I was in an area I didn't know well & popped into a sweet shop. The guy behind the counter didn't ring true (think of a stereotypical big, hard crim) & he seemed a little taken aback that I'd walked in. I thought the best thing to do was to pretend I thought everything was normal, so I asked for a quarter of this & that. He didn't know where anything was but went along with it. I bought my sweets & left, not knowing if I'd just been served by someone who was doing the place over.

I used to work at a language school in another country.

I fell out with the scheduler one day and went out with some friends and acquaintances that night for a few beers and bitched a bit about him.

Next morning, I went into the language school to start work and saw the scheduler there, white as a sheet.

One of the acquaintances from the night before had come into the language school very early and had tried to garotte the scheduler with some wire because I had slagged him off. Not even particularly badly. Luckily another teacher was there to pull him off. No charges were pressed. I was 😮 and the poor scheduler was so distressed.

Another time at the end of term, we took the students out for drinks in various bars around the city. I heard that one of the teachers had bitten the finger of a student and then told him he was now HIV +Ve. 😮

The British abroad.

[quote ZingDramaQueenOfSheeba]@viques

seems like another alumni of the University of Midwives Tales and Other Random Bullshit[/quote]
One can never sufficiently underestimate some people's intelligence!

A pupil of mine, about 14 years old had had a class where the effects of smoking were discussed, one being that babies could be born smaller. The girl thouight this was a good thing, it would hurt less, so it made sense to smoke!

My dad and I were walking along San Diego harbour once when he stopped and said “oh hello Bill!” It was a man he worked with. Neither knew the other was going to be there.

Same holiday we were in a tiny diner in the middle of nowhere out in the Arizona desert. Mum worked as a lithographer (decorator) in the pottery industry. The coffee cup they put down in front of her was from her factory. The real WTF moment came when she turned it over to prove her point and on the back was her number. She’d decorated the cup.

(Each lithographer is given a number which is removed before firing so that ware can be checked. Occasionally they slip through and get fired on. They should then be declared seconds and only sold in the factory shop. This had slipped through)

@Clawdy I was once in Camden in London and saw two big men wrestling a smaller man through an unmarked door. I called 999 and reported a kidnapping. Turned out they were police officers and were aresting him.

Caster Oil causes diarrhoea and the action of the bowels helps contractions to start.

Driving to work I always used to see this old man walking in high-vis along the pavement on a certain stretch of road.

One day, driving in as usual, I saw him but this time he was bent over with his trousers down, mooning the cars as we drove past!

It was a bit of a shock actually.

Omg the dragon one has reminded me! I used to have this friend, one day I went round her house and she excitedly showed me her new pet, a bearded dragon. She said he hadn't breathed fire yet and she wasn't sure if he was too young to do it because maybe only adults do it. She was being deadly serious and was really disappointed when I explained that they don't actually breathe fire and that fire breathing dragons are mythical, like unicorns. Then she goes "Unicorns aren't real either!?!"

That was supposed to be in response to @81Byerley - I haven't got the hang of this yet!

I was teaching a community adult education class around the times of the anniversary of the moon landings and decided to focus on this as a topic. After watching a documentary on it one of the students piped up 'It's amazing they managed to stay up there so long' and of course I agreed, and talked about the technology of the time blah blah, and then she 'No, I mean, well the moon gets smaller doesn't it' . I'm still not quite sure whether she was thinking of the phases of the moon or the fact that you can't generally see it during daylight hours but I did gently explain that the moon is actually always the same size despite how little of it we may actually see at times.

Another more serious one with a previous partner who, a few weeks after we had been going out, casually dropped into conversation about the period of their teenage years when they had believed they were Jesus Christ. I guess it was the fact that I had had no build up to the seriousness of the mental health challenges they had previously experienced and felt quite unprepared for what was being said. They were very well recovered and it led to a more in depth discussion & understanding about their previous difficulties but out of the blue it was quite a lot to take in.

[quote ZingDramaQueenOfSheeba]@viques

seems like another alumni of the University of Midwives Tales and Other Random Bullshit[/quote]
Sorry you doubt me , it is a true story, and she was perfectly convinced that that was the reason for the castor oil. Hammersmith Hospital if anyone wants to verify it!

Google Oliver's Travels. Although it turns out the price is £100k not £10k!

Went on holiday to Florida. Bought tickets to a Rodeo type show. My DD, who was 6 at the time pipes up "My friend Megan is in Florida, I bet we will see her at the show tonight". I explained that was very unlikely. Get to the show, and bam, there she is!

My Mum saw a medium, who told her that she would come to own a guitar by unusual means and that she would win the lottery. A few years later, her and my Dad were sitting in the garden late at night having a few wines, and a guitar flies over the fence and lands in the middle of the lawn. A couple of weeks later they won £20,000 on the lottery. The same medium told my Mum about lots of changes that would happen in my life. She used my name, which is highly unusual. Every single thing came true. I was sceptical until this happened.

One night years ago we heard a commotion and yelling outside our top floor flat. Looking outside, in the dark, we saw a man on the ground being punched and slapped by two other men. DH opened the window and shouted" Get off him, I'm ringing the police! " One of the men looked up and growled "We ARE the f*ing police! "

@viques

seems like another alumni of the University of Midwives Tales and Other Random Bullshit

A woman was telling me that when her children were born it was customary to be given a dose of castor oil and an enema. I asked her why and she said in all seriousness “ Well the castor oil is to grease the baby’s head to help it out” she was also of the opinion that vitamin supplements were of little value during pregnancy since she had never taken them and had had easy births, whereas her sister, who had taken vitamins through her pregnancy , had a much harder labour.

I worked with a seemingly intelligent but slightly naive young woman. All was going well, we all bonded well during training.

One day, during lunch, we were all chatting and somehow the conversation turned to dragons (don't ask, I've no idea how). She proceeded to ask the group (about 10 of us) where they lived, because 'surely they can't live in cities and whatnot, they'd always be burning stuff down and hurting people'. She genuinely believed in dragons. We were all 😳

The throwing up on a bus surely isnt wierd at all, millions of people have travel sickness, bus rides are long and stuffy and you have zero control of it... hope she was ok.

(I’m not making fun, this sort of confusion/lack of knowledge sadly happens to a lot of people)