USVI-On-Line

Talking about strange people in my last post on RSVPs made me think...what strange people do YOU know?

The guy I referred to eating the tenderloin...he starves all week and then on the weekend eats as much as humanly possible. (He used to be very heavy).

He will not eat or drink at parties before 10:00. He stays up all hours of the night and keeps his children up with him (this happening even when his boy was in elementary school, kept him up till 4 am on a regular basis, listening to Aerosmith and heavy metal type bands, the children now talk about these groups constantly.) My kids are like, "who?"

His wife has all of the famlies closets with matching hangers and in rainbow color order. She
glued the lego creations her children made together (like a castle) so the kids wouldn't make a mess.

She would hang her daughters Barbie clothes up on hangers, also in rainbow order.


They make me feel so normal. I swear these people are for real and I am not making this up.

Who do YOU know that makes you feel normal?

ps. we all have our quirks, but not THIS many!

good story, djmom,

Here's why I feel "normal", at least some of the time.

One night my partner received a phone call from an old friend whom I’ll call “X.”

X is brilliant, a bit quirky, has a PhD, and had just recently retired from a career in medical research. Apparently X decided to go on a road trip, was in the area, and called to ask if we were free for the long weekend. We invited X to stay with us for the weekend…our mistake.

We can handle X for three or four days, but after the third week, we had to confront X and, in as nice a way as possible, insist that it was time to leave. This was hard to do to an old friend.

X is a germ-a-phobe. X carries a small bottle of hydrogen peroxide at all times. All surfaces in our home had to be wiped clean with bleach. I’m sort of okay with that. I only became concerned when I started seeing large bundles of cotton gauze in the trash. Apparently X had been wiping his body with bleach also. We had a discussion about how dangerous this might be, but to no avail.

The final straw came when I returned home from doing errands and saw one of those long, orange heavy-duty extension cords dangling from the roof. X had climbed onto the roof from a ladder with my $500 Miele canister vacuum and was vacuuming the roof! I wanted to yell, but was afraid X might fall. Instead, I ran into the house, got my camera and took photos for proof, because I knew no one would believe this. It was time for poor X to go.

ROTFL Spindrift.

Sad but funny. I'm sure people like both of our examples have some legitimate mental problems, but when they make us live their problems and take advantage of us (when they aren't really good friends to begin with), it gets to the point that it is crossing the line.

Got a co-worker that fell at work and broke her arm. It was sad.

However after a month of her being off the job, we realized that she must not do anything, because we didn't have to do anything to cover her work load.

Once upon her part time return, she braged that she did so much but we didn't pay any attention.

Very sad that she still thinks she is a vital part of the office. Reminds me of the movie in "Office Space" and I want to take her stapler away.

OMG, I really am laughing my ass off!! djmom, are you sure those people weren't the Osbournes??

spindrift, how weird that this person retired from a career in medical research, yet didn't seem to grasp the dangers of wiping bleach on your skin! He/she is probably that way because of the medical research!!

Terry, why don't you just move her down to the basement? (Office Space is one of my favorite movies!)

CAGirl, I think you’re right. That was my thought, also. Perhaps it’s a result from working in a sterile environment all those years while needing to be protected from stacks of cultured Petri dishes and blood samples and the like.

There was another quirky habit that should have tipped us off. Whenever we left the house to sight-see or go to a restaurant, X always wore a pair of black driving gloves and never took them off. I can still picture X handling, eating slices of cheesy pizza with those black gloves on.

But X means well and is still our friend, maybe just long distance for now.

X probably realizes just how many germs are really out there!! I don't think I want to know. Just put X in the same category as Monk and Howie Mandel. Really cool people with a quirky germophobe thing.

One of the reasons why I love living on St. John so much is, no matter how odd I am, it is EASY to find someone here who totally blows me out of the water! I feel so normal here that I almost bore myself. As far as the transplant locals go, there is a ton of truth to that bumper sticker that says "We're all here because we're not all there" This island is so full of eccentric characters.

I hope more people contribute to this thread...I'm starting to feel really plain!

More, please, more!! I'm in need of some good belly laughs!

I'm afraid people aren't posting because no one will be able to top Spindrift

Come on, people, I know you all know a special someone that makes you go "HUH????"

Oh, why not. Many years ago I worked for a woman who was certifiable. I tried to keep a straight face during my interview because she had dotted concealer around her eyes and didn't blend it in. I should have known better things were coming. She brought 2 boiled red potatoes in a brown paper bag every day for lunch...every day for 7 years! When our new CEO came through the front door of our building on his first day, she crawled up the hall on her hands and knees while yelling, our savior has arrived! She never touched anything, I'm talking door knobs, coffee pots, shaking hands, anything that didn't belong to her and if she did, her elbows guided her to the nearest sink and soap. After working with her for 7 years and finally moving on to another job, she told me I was an enigma! I was so happy to be far, far way

Oh boy, the germ-a-phobes/OCDs really go over the top. The grandmother of one of our closest friends used to dip her husband's hunting beagles in pure bleach when he returned home from hunting. Theses were outdoor kennelled dogs so it wasn't like they were coming in her house.

And what is it about food that makes seemingly normal people take a trip to Crazytown?

For a number of years I served on a board with an extremely wealthy woman, like you would recognize the name of the chain of stores her father founded wealthy.

After our meetings would break up, she would take all the leftover sandwiches and snacks home in her purse to feed to her husband. Once, the catering crew tried to take away a tray of bagels and she went nuts and shouted about how she needed to take that food home to Fred (not his real name).

I had a co-worker who told me how her in-laws would bring their own containers to her house during holiday visits and go into the kitchen and fill them with her food.

I live in a fairly rural area close to a fishing area on the Potomac River.Now, in addition to a very old general store down the hill, there is a Buddist temple close by. All very nice people, all in all, but the nuns and monks come to the general store and buy up all of their nightcrawlers and take the worms up to the temple grounds, and as a "celebration of life" set them free. They do this so fishermen won't be able to have bait to catch fish with. I guess that it's a minor league "Save the Whales" effort! Now, the rednecks around here think of this as very odd behavior.

JT wrote: the nuns and monks come to the general store and buy up all of their nightcrawlers and take the worms up to the temple grounds, and as a "celebration of life" set them free.

... and I bet they have the best top soil in their gardens you ever saw!

My worst - I mean FIRST - husband had OCD. One of his things was labelling things. He used those damn little things that make labels on tape. By the time my daughter and I left, most of the house was "labelled." The cupboards were labelled with where things belonged, closets with whose they were or what they were for, washer had labels declaring what temp to wash which items in, water filter on the sink had a label that advised "ALL DRINKING WATER MUST GO THREW FILTER" (no-he wasn't obsessive about spelling). Even my daughter's toy boxes were labelled. It was awful.
He also put (labelled) ziplocks inside of ziplocks, inside of ziplocks. For instance, the dishcloth was in a labelled ziplock, along with dish soap in its own labelled ziplock, and SOS pads in their own labelled ziplock, and all three of those went in a ziplock labelled "dishwashing."
He never vacuumed the roof, though....