Weirdest, strangest, scariest thing you've ever seen

Summer of 1984 and I'm working my first job out of college as a summer temp with AP in New York. Mild-mannered midwestern boy in the Big City.

My apartment is in Flushing, the first (or last, depending on your perspective) stop on the 7 line, with about an eight-block walk to get there. As I'm riding into work a 7 (p.m.) to 3 a.m. shift I look up and briefly catch the eye of someone who looks like he's pretty tripped out on something. I immediately look away, but the guy starts making all kinds of gestures and noises directed at me. I get up and walk away to another car. To get to work I have to get off at Roosevelt Plaza and go underground to connect to the E train. Mr. Nutso gets off, too, but I get a decent head start on him and get to an area where I see two transit cops. I just hang out there for a few moments when Mr. Nutso goes up to the two cops and points at me and says "Arrest that man. He looked at me!!" The cops tell him to move along and he goes to an outbound platform. I tell them what happened on the train and they say not to worry about it and that the guy is obviously either high or crazy. I go to my inbound platform and am left with a story to tell 31 years later. I also told the story in the office, and one guy pulls me aside and shows me one hell of a knife that he keeps in his satchel bag for his subway ride home.

 

I saw a kid collapse and die on the court at a JV game.

On the lighter side, I saw a man and woman having sex against the wall in an alley in San Francisco, doggy style. They looked right at us and kept on going.

 

Were they coming from a frat party?

 

-- Hank Gathers.
-- I've seen two car batteries explode while using jumper cables. The first time: The press box attendant at the Astrodome would drive the visiting writers back to their hotel if it was close by. We had to deal with the cables one night. One kept slipping off. I'm told to "hold it on there." I do, but fortunately, I pulled back just a second before it exploded or I would have gotten it right in the face. Took most of a bottle of Jack Daniels to relax later that night.
-- When I was about 12-13, my aunt took us to a beach camp in Baja, a few miles south of Ensenada. There was a resort (Estero Beach) and another beach camp in addition to the one we used (Corona Beach). There was a small island just off shore. The waves could come around it, crash together and make for some dangerous water conditions. The beach right there was restricted. On the way there at a gas stop in Ensenada, the attendant asked where we were going and said that two girls drowned at the restricted beach a few days before. A couple of days after we got there, people were running up the beach so we followed. The drowned girls had finally washed ashore. They were on the beach covered by a tarp, but when the medics were removing them, the cover came off. First time I saw a dead person.

 

When I was 18, I was working at the roads and transportation department. Some genius had thrown a Christmas tree into a ditch. It got stuck and we had to use a crane to pull it out. I bent down to tie my boot...

...about three seconds before the crane snapped and starting swinging like a pendulum. It went right above my head and it would have likely killed me. The look on my co-worker's ashen face....

Again when I was 18, my dad and I had a huge blow up that got violent. I left the house but he wouldn't let me have my keys so I called my mom to pick me up. She decided to pick up my friend to take along.

It was close to midnight and I was at the first payphone I could find. I had been alone nearly an hour until some shady looking car drove up. The drive got out and said "hey." I responded with the same and my mom drove up right as I did. Dude jumped in the car and sped off. I still don't know his intention.

One time I was walking with some friends downtown in a major city that has more than its fair share of violent crime. I was wearing an Oakland Athletics hat. As we headed to a building, I could hear some shouting behind me. I didn't think anything of it but as I entered a building, I turned back to say something to my friend. I saw some gangbanger, decked out head-to-toe in red and it was him screaming at me. My friend, who was more street smart than me, grabbed my hat and tossed it. He told me in no uncertain terms that I had responded, I would have been shot on sight.

 

When I was in college, I was staying at my aunt and uncle's house near New Orleans (in Marrero, a not-so-swanky suburb on the West Bank) for the weekend. A friend was coming by the house to pick me up to go into the city around 11 p.m. He lived a few minutes away, so after he called to say he was coming I sat out front to wait.
In the meantime, a car drove by very slowly ... and then came back a few minutes later ... and again a third time.
After the second time, my spidey sense was going off so when I saw it coming back down the street for the third pass I hid behind a big ass van my aunt and uncle kept parked in the driveway. They must not have seen me and kept on driving. My friend came by a few minutes later and I told him about it. We drove around the neighborhood for a minute but didn't see anything.
Don't know if they thought I was someone else, I was wearing the wrong thing, or they were marking me for a straight-up robbery, but the whole thing was pretty creepy.

 

Not long after high school, I was out partying with a group of friends and ended up at one of their houses. We were several beers in, and he decided to show us his parents' shotgun. He decided to show us how to load it, and when he closed the stock the damn thing went off. Blasted a big hole in the wall about 3 feet above my head and blew out the side of the window. Guy sitting next to me was PISSED, but to this day I have no idea why I wasn't either totally pissed or terrified that I had almost been killed.

 

Did anyone shit themselves?

 

No, but I thought the big SOB who was sitting next to me was going to kick the shit out of HIM. I guess the beer softened the blow for me. I think I might have even let out a (nervous) laugh. And they were actually more my sisters' friends, so a little older and "cooler." I didn't want to look like a wuss.

 

I've also been in two car crashes and totaled both cars. In both instances, the other driver was in his mid-80s. One ran a red light. The other just tried to cross the road between two parking lots and somehow didn't see me. And I was once run off the side of a two-lane road by a speeding car that crossed the center line. Me, my two sisters and my future brother-in-law would have likely been killed. In all three scenarios, I was strangely calm. Maybe I am a robot.

 

I've never seen anyone die on the playing field, but I did see a high school football player become a quadraplegic after breaking his neck making a tackle. Kid has since gotten his law degree, practices locally and has twin sons.

And once a few years ago, my mom was driving me, my son and my nephew to Moody Gardens in Galveston and we were maybe 4-5 miles out on I-45. She was in the far right of three lanes and moved into the center lane at the same time that another car moved into the lane from the left lane and clipped us. Mom's Beamer did about four complete spins right off the freeway onto the wide shoulder between the highway and the frontage. We ended up facing the way we needed to go, with barely a scratch on the car, and drove off like nothing happened. If that same accident had happened just about anywhere else on 45 headed into the city, we'd have probably all been killed or seriously injured.

 

At least he has the twin sons going for him.