Things That Make You Say Huh?

We’ve all heard somebody say you can’t make this stuff up when they come across something that seems so bizarre it can’t be real, but it happens all the time. Sometimes it’s not the things that happen, but the things you hear. Things that make you say, huh? Here are some examples we have heard people say or ask over the years.

We were staying at a campground in Hannibal, Missouri and went to a small restaurant for dinner. Our waitress seemed fascinated with the fulltime RV lifestyle, and since it was a slow night without many customers, she spent quite a bit of time talking to us. I don’t know how we got onto the subject of her family, but she told us that her sister, who was a schoolteacher, had dated the same boy all through high school and everybody knew they were going to get married someday. But he joined the Army and got sent to the Gulf, where he unfortunately lost a leg in combat. Now he was back home and recovered and had popped the question. Our waitress said her sister called her all freaked out because as much as she loved the guy, she really wanted to have children and didn’t know if she could handle it if one of their kids was born without a leg like his father. Then she added, “That’s my sister, the one with the college education, and my parents are disappointed in me because I’m just a waitress.”

Yesterday in one of the online authors groups I go to, someone had a question about a book they are writing. She said that the plot of the book is that someone steals the DNA of a popular presidential candidate and makes a clone of him. Her problem was that, for the purposes of the story, she didn’t want the clone to be the same age as the unwitting donor was now, because she wanted to re-create his childhood and alter the outcome of his life, and wasn’t sure how to do that.

But don’t think just authors and schoolteachers are weird. We have heard some pretty strange questions and comments from RVers. A while back someone told me they bought a new motorhome but they are afraid to fill the freshwater tank because it holds 100 gallons and water weighs 8.3 pounds per gallon, and they were afraid that with all that weight in it the tank would fall off.

Years ago, when Arizona was closing down state parks to save money during a budget crisis, one of the parks scheduled to be shut down was Lost Dutchman State Park in Apache Junction, in the foothills of the Superstition Mountains. An RV snowbird who spends every winter at an RV resort in that area said she was just heartbroken because she loved to sit out under the awning every morning and enjoy looking at the sun rising over the Superstition Mountains, and she couldn’t bear the thought of not having that view anymore. I guess she thought they were going to pull a plug somewhere and let the air out of the mountains and they would just collapse.

Jumping the Broom is an African-American tradition in which a newlywed couple jumps over a broom to symbolize that their wedding is the start of a new beginning in their lives, sweeping away the old and welcoming in the new. There is a scene in the popular television series This Is Us of Randall and Beth’s wedding, where they jump the broom. Recently somebody asked what that was all about, and another person answered that it was a ceremony that witch covens did at the start of their weekly meetings. I didn’t even know witch covens had weekly meetings. Did you?

And finally, just yesterday I heard one that really blew me away. A while back my chiropractor suggested we get an adjustable bed in which I can raise both the head and the feet, which folds my body and puts me into a zero gravity position. It’s amazing how it almost instantly takes the pain away when I’m hurting bad. I mentioned that to somebody on Facebook who is also experiencing a lot of back pain, and she asked, in all seriousness, how I kept from floating away like the astronauts do once I reached zero gravity. I’ll tell you what, it would take a whole bunch of zero gravity to make all of this float!

Today is your last chance to enter our Free Drawing for an autographed copy of Big Lake Wedding, the fifteenth book in my Big Lake mystery series. To enter, click on this Free Drawing link or the tab at the top of this page and enter your name (first and last) in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn this evening.

Thought For The Day – Common sense is a flower that does not grow in everyone’s garden.