One time, when I was working at a summer camp as a specialty staff, my coworker/roommate who I barely talked to and barely knew randomly pulled out his switch and asked me if I could do a part of Celeste he was stuck on. I said sure, and did it for him, but then asked why he asked me in particular. He just said I 'seemed like the type of guy to have beaten Celeste'. I haven't started socially transitioning, so I don't know where that vibe came from, and I still think about it 
Every so often on long road trips I'll stop in to a walmart and wander around to get snacks and shake out my legs, and then completely lose track of space and time. I'll be looking at a wall of gatorades and realize I don't know what state I'm in, what year it is, where I came from, where I'm going. I'm simply in wal-mart. The wal-mart. The wal-mart that exists at the confluence of all possible wal-marts. The ultimate liminal space, the place where reality melts in to impossibility.
Been there, totally get it. There's a lot of small towns you can drive through that give the same feel, as well. Once you get away from the metropolises and surrounding suburban sprawl. Like they're all trapped in the architectural styles of decades past that the present day has forgotten.
There is no legitimate reason why society should prevent you from just shooting local cops. They're literally bandits and serve no legitimate social purpose at all, even for protecting the property off the burgersie.
Costco does that to me. They're extremely consistent with only a few different internal layouts. And I used to go to one as a kid every 1-2 weeks, and now I rarely go, so I always feel like I'm in my hometown's Costco.
It's a shame that we've become so inured to the superstore because they are such strange and surreal places. If you put a medieval peasant in one for 15 minutes they would go back and found a whole new religion
If you put a medieval peasant in one for 15 minutes they would go back and found a whole new religion
It's called a cargo cult, dad, and we already had those!
I know there's a stereotype about american walmarts, but holy shit were they weird when i used to tour. 3am, in between towns, just going in to grab some microwave food and chips, and it felt disorienting. Just the most bland lighting possible with the bottom rung of society wandering its aisles, looking for the next cheap hit of fat and salt, slowly being ground down by life itself. Absolutely wild to an outsider like me.
I'll be looking at a wall of gatorades and realize I don't know what state I'm in, what year it is, where I came from, where I'm going. I'm simply in wal-mart.
I'm gonna be honest here, that might be a you problem. How old are you again?
While waiting in line at a walgreens photo counter, an older man walked up and mumble-asked me "is this a good place to do business?", before seemlessly parlaying that simple question into discussion of the recent removal of his catheter, the impact that catheter had on his sex life and the nonchalance the doctors displayed to that fact, and his upcoming southeast asian sex tourism.
Since I was small I infrequently (maybe once in a few years) enter a dissociative state for 5-10~ minutes where I can't visualize things correctly, like if I form a mental image of a person their hands and feet will balloon out of proportion. Had an anthropology teacher that was describing it and I never knew it was something that happened to other people, figured I has a tumor pressing on my brain or something.
I had one episode during a period of intense stress and anxiety. It was so goddam intense and scary, which only fed it and made it worse. I'd see the same person simultaniously far away and right up on my face, space wouldn't make any sense and time was all choppy. It was made worse by the fact that I had to go attend to a thing as it was happening.
It all got bad to a point that I started getting what I think must have been psychotic symptoms (even though I was mostly aware that it was all coming from my head). I thought the signs were all talking directly to me (a "🤫 silence" sign got me all jittery) and people's eyes were all in HD and violent.
I started treating anxiety in that same week and I'm all good now, years later.
Had an anthropology teacher that was describing it and I never knew it was something that happened to other people,
what is it called? I want to read about it
A comrade once mentioned being in contact with a FOIA lawyer and I just on a whim asked them if it happened to be Ryan Shapiro who is also an acquaintance of mine and it turned out it was him. I guess it's not really that weird cuz Ryan is one of the best at what he does.
I was on a road trip through going through Arkansas and got pulled over. The cop searched my car and called in a K9, had the K9 reached my car it definitely would have ruined my day. A mangy stray dog ran out of some bushes nearby and jumped into my car, it started eating all my funyon trash in the backseat. The cop was walking his dog up to my car at the time, he looked at the stray and just said, "I'm not going near that thing," then turned around and left.
I once had an old man approach me as if I was his old friend from when he was younger. He tried explaining to me that I had an "old soul" and that I was easy to find. He kinda just nodded at me when he was finished and went back into the aisles of Best Buy.
Had a guy at Circle K asking every single person if condoms or diapers were more expensive. He never deviated from his inquiries. Never changed it up, never changed tones. Just asking. When he was told to leave, he left without a fuss but he had to get one last question in.
When I have a one off interaction with a stranger in the city centre, I often think about how, in all likelihood, despite living in the same region, we will never see each other again for as long as we both live. It makes me feel strange.
When I was like eleven or twelve, I went door to door selling popcorn as a boy scout fundraiser. It was like 8pm on a summer or fall night and I knocked on one door in the suburbs near where I lived and after a second, I heard the sound of someone rushing up some stairs inside the house, I guess from the basement. The door opens and there's this guy with long rubber gloves on looking frazzled. "Yeah??" "uh hi im from boy scout troop whatever and were selling popcorn to raise--" He looks back down the stairs that he came up and then back at me and says in a panicked voice "Listen, could you come back another time? I'm right in the middle of something..." "uhhh okay--" Door slams and I hear him pounding back down the stairs. I never did go back to that house
Having worked all over the place, the weirdest and most surreal moments in time are when you're on smoke break during the night shift, staring into the desert/forest/rural wasteland at nothing in particular, and letting your mind wander. Whether you spook yourself into hearing or seeing something that doesn't exist, might exist, or did exist, to thinking about how far away your bed is, and the possibility you might not see it again.
But thats just a hypothetical, the most weirded out i've ever been was working night shift out in the middle of nowhere, going for my break, and seeing a car drive about 1km away from where i was standing, facing me, and not moving. Nobody got out, and just idled and watched. None of my crew saw it leave, either.
My buddy insists that one time, during an over-nighter, he was taking trash out to the dumpster and saw a fucking raccoon-alligator hybrid about six feet long clamber out of the dumpster and in to the woods. It's wild out there. Stay strapped stay safe.
House sitting with a friend for some rich people in the fall. They had a Great Dane and a heated pool. We took some shrooms. The dog preceded to howl, then die in the bushes next to the pool. Lashed out at us anytime we tried to approach him to see what was wrong. He had a cyst in his lung that burst and he drowned on land was what we were told. Had to pick up its body and put it in our car and drive it to the emergency vet on shrooms, so they could confirm the cause of death.
When I was growing up I was sleeping one night. I woke up, and CLEARLY heard a voice shouting gibberish at me. No idea ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Hallucinations are relatively common and most of the time aren't connected to any mental health issues or problems at all. There's a group called Hearing Voices Network if you're curious that does education and advocacy. There's a huge stigma about it but most people who experience audio and visual hallucinations have really mundane, harmless ones and it's pretty rare for people not to know they're hallucinations. It's one of those things that isn't a big deal but there's so much stigma about it people are afraid to talk about it so no one knows how common it is.
Personally I think we're so hyper-tuned to be listening for language and seeing potential threats, friends, and food, and our perception of the world is based on so many kludges and hacks and barely functioning systems, that most hallucinations are just false-positives. Your brain receives white noise or an ambiguous sound and interprets it as speech or whatever out of an abundance of caution.
my first halucinations really stuck with me for a long time until i had more & now they're kinda forgettable
Was at my parents house, walking down the stairs and stopped to look at a picture collage. I saw a picture of my sister from when she was in high school with a friend that she had been close to but my sister had moved out of state and they parted ways maybe 10 years ago.
I thought, wonder what she's doing.
I'm home alone just reading and there's a knock at the door. It's was my sister's friend from high school who randomly was in town and decided to stop by my parents house to ask about my sister. She proceeded to tell me how she was doing.
