Does my mum deciding to foster me count?

Saw my favorite band at a concert once, and for some reason I couldn’t work out, my card wouldn’t work at the merch desk. Worked at the bar, not the merch. Ol’ mate working the merch desk straight up gave me the $60 worth of albums for free! Genuinely moved me to tears.

Funny that though, I’m seeing them again tonight, and I plan on paying the guy back.

This morning as I was walking my dog, somebody pulled up next to me in their car, rolled down their window, and shouted at me “you have a really cute dog!”

In Osaka last year on holiday with some mates, out at a bar and we’re all pretty loaded and somehow ended up talking about the Fallout games (because we’re all huge nerds), I assume pretty loudly. An American woman comes up to us and tells us that she heard us talking about Fallout and that she is a producer on the TV show for it and how cool it is to hear some randos talking about how much they like the games and that she’s really excited about the show and how good its going to be.

Made our night, we’re all kicking ourselves for not getting some kind of contact details off her because it would be great to message her and let her know how much we like the show.

We were in Key West and walked down the street to get a massage. When my husband tried to pay afterwards, he realized he’d lost his wallet. He turned on his phone and had a voice mail from the bank with the name and contact info for the guy who found his wallet. It had fallen in the street and was picked up by a group of Navy guys. We met up and spent the afternoon drinking and chatting with them.

First day moving to Germany in a study abroad. Lost and confused in country where I don’t speak the language. Dragging 3 luggage bags up a hill searching for my rented apartment. This old lady and her son comes and helps me find the building and even drags my bags along with me up the hilly road. Was very kind of her.

I was in Seattle one night and as my husband and I were walking back to our hotel room, fairly wasted I should say, we saw a lady walking down the street having a real bad time. She was super drunk and crying and kept falling down as she was wearing these ridiculous platform heels. I said we’ve got to go help her and we intercepted her. Picked her up and calmed her down a bit, asked her where she was going, how far to home. Figured we’d hail a cab and pay for it. She pointed to a building and said that’s where so we were like ok and we’re ready to send her on her way and she fell again. I was like nah, you can’t walk in these so I helped her take them off and then was like oh no, you can walk barefoot in the city so I took off my boots and socks and gave her my thick wool socks to finish the walk. Off she went. I hope she still has them, they were awesome socks.

I did not remember the whole thing when I woke up and was all, where tf are my socks??

This was by turns weird, creepy, and wholesome.

I was living in Kanata at the time and waiting for the bus to get to work. It was a hot day so I was dressed lightly. Out of the blue, while I was reading (the bus service was terribly slow and unreliable), I got that thing I always dreaded: some guy saying “hello”. Whenever some guy I’ve never met just suddenly starts talking to me for no reason, I get on the defensive. I’m smart enough, though, not to respond with hostility because if it comes to that, I’m smaller and weaker and liable to lose should things get physical.

So I put on my pleasant face, internally wondering what this guy wanted. Was he trying to sell me something? Recruiting for a cult? Sex pest? All those cynical thoughts were echoing in my head as I replied “Hi” and returned to my book.

“Is it always this hot this time of year?”

Dammit! He was still trying to chat me up! What is this guy’s deal?

“No, this is unusual for Ottawa.” (Kanata was separate from Ottawa at the time, but we generally referred to the region, not the specific city.) “But you know the old saying: don’t like the weather here? Wait five minutes.”

And back to my b… DAMMIT! HE’S STILL TALKING!

So against my will, just by the forces of pretending to be polite, I was dragged into a long and rambling conversation about anything under the (as mentioned, hot) sun. I couldn’t get a handle on why this guy was talking to me. He wasn’t selling me anything, nor trying to recruit me for anything, nor was he making a pass at me. I just couldn’t figure out what he wanted.

Until it dawned on me. Derek (that was his name; it came out during conversation) was just a small town guy (from northern Ontario; that came out in conversation too) who was profoundly lonely in the “big” city. He’d come to town for work but was having problems adjusting to “big” city “fuck you and mind your business” attitude. (He’d have died of anaphylactic shock in Toronto!) He was so starved for human contact he just started talking to a random stranger at a bus stop to see if he could make any connection of any kind.

And because I was brought up to be polite, I got dragged into his attempt to making contact and, quite against my will, actually made contact.

We parted when my bus came, all smiles and friendly. There were no inevitably-broken promises of keeping in touch. We both knew that it wasn’t going to happen. (This is before mobile phones were commonplace so exchanging numbers wasn’t an option.) But over the course of that rambling and weird-turned-creepy-turned-warm-hearted conversation he visibly brightened up. He’d made contact.

I was in Seattle one night and as my husband and I were walking back to our hotel room, fairly wasted I should say, we saw a lady walking down the street having a real bad time. She was super drunk and crying and kept falling down as she was wearing these ridiculous platform heels. I said we’ve got to go help her and we intercepted her. Picked her up and calmed her down a bit, asked her where she was going, how far to home. Figured we’d hail a cab and pay for it. She pointed to a building and said that’s where so we were like ok and we’re ready to send her on her way and she fell again. I was like nah, you can’t walk in these so I helped her take them off and then was like oh no, you can walk barefoot in the city so I took off my boots and socks and gave her my thick wool socks to finish the walk. Off she went. I hope she still has them, they were awesome socks.

I did not remember the whole thing when I woke up and was all, where tf are my socks??