Have you ever genuinely believed you were experiencing a crazy movie- or TV-plot in real life? Here’s why I’m asking: This morning, while still in bed, I heard what sounded like large, thunderous, reverberating footsteps. The kind that, for approximately 10 seconds, I thought might be coming from a Transformer walking down my street. (I blame this on the press release I recently received announcing that Bumblebee from the movie Transformers would be hanging out in West Hollywood to mark the DVD release.) It’s good to know that were my street being attacked, I would neither fight nor flee — if I was enjoying perfect pillow position.
I’ve experienced that kind of "Holy crap!" moment once before. A few years back, I got off the bus at the end of my evening commute and turned the corner to the cobblestone alley where my apartment was. Only it wasn’t there. The world stood still as I tried to digest the notion that whatever had happened to Nicolas Cage in The Family Man might have just happened to me. (Luckily, all that had actually happened was that the bus stopped a block early, and being on auto-pilot, I didn’t realize it.)
Your turn.
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I had a family member who loved cheating on his girl. One day she walked in on him and proceeded to burn down his house. He and the “other woman” had to flee from a burning house. Alas, no one was charged and those two crazy kids are still together. Oh, they are distant cousins to boot.
Once on a highway I was driving with a semi in front, back and beside me like Smokey and the Bandit. I was trapped and nobody could see me in there. All I needed was a cop trying to pull me over.
There was, a few months ago, a couple of days where it felt as though my life was a soap opera; bad things just kept happening. The next day, I was walking along, feeling depressed, and the heavens opened up. My umbrella was nowhere to be found. All I needed was “All By Myself” to be playing in the background and I was in the heartbreak section of any romantic comedy.
And there was one day a week or so ago when I was driving in my car, and just as Mariah Carey was singing, “spread your wings and FLYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY” a V of birds flew across my field of vision. It was a beautiful moment.
Neither of these are really the type of “Holy crap!” moments you had, Mandi, but I just refuse to talk about the time when the Blair Witch was following me as I was taking out the garbage. I will just say that my house is surrounded by woods, and I had just seen the movie, and I was all alone. OR SO I THOUGHT…
Wow, J. You must be from the south.
I work in a sitcom environment everyday. If you work in an urban public library, I guarentee that the library is anything BUT quiet. Two summers ago my children’s services supervisor had to do her monthly rounds at my branch. The children’s room became so noisy that she turned off the computers. One boy retaliated by climbing to the roof. Apparently he climbed up a pole that was facing north. Eventhough he was portly, I am sure that he’s awesome at climbing the rope in gym class! Still, portly, north pole, AND he was wearing a red suit… . If that is not sitcom material, I don’t know what is.
Actually Lesley, I’m foreign.
My friend found an ad for a dog in the newspaper and we drove insanely far out in the country to go get it. It was very dark, kinda misty, and very spooky. The farmhouse was right out of a horror movie, and the weird owner lady took us around back to the rusty ramshackled shed. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that we were about to get brutally murdered and hung to dry in that shed. Fortunately at that moment the puppies came running out and I didn’t do anything stupid. The lady turned out to be nice and we left with a puppy. All’s well that ends well.
To Lesley…Wow! you must never have been to Deer Isle, Maine….everyone is married to cousins! Don’t go throwing stones at the south….they don’t have a monopoly on stupid….
my brother, my mom and i were driving upstate at the end of august this year (which in NY is always hot and humid). suddenly, my brother’s face fell as he noticed the gas gauge. we were virtually empty. and all i could think was, we’re going to have to walk in this deathly heat for miles to go find a gas station. and it’ll be like the desert scene in babel. or something.
I remember once when I was younger, I had seen Indepence Day a few days earlier in the movie theater and loved it. Anyways, at like 2 in the morning, a violent thunderstorm goes thru the area, waking me up. For about 15 seconds, I was convinced the aliens were coming and hiding in the storm. Pathetic, huh?
When i first saw the Exorcist, i was scared s—less to the point where I had to sleep on the floor in my brother’s room just so I wouldn’t freak out. In the middle of the night, I got up to go to the bathroom, and a little girl was standing in the hallway in a nightgown, and I was sure it was the girl from the movie. Turns out it was just my little sister, but I practically crapped my pants.
Just last week, I was reading me some Salem’s Lot and generally being freaked out home alone at night. I was reading a scene where a creepy kid vampire was outside a window wanting in. Then I heard some commotion outside my window, and of course became more freaked out. I tiptoed over to the window, and when I leaned over to look out, I heard a very loud “HELLO” coming from the floor. I COMPLETELY flipped out, hollering and spazzing, until I figured out that my toe had brushed against – get this – a TALKING SCALE that my husband had just bought that morning. I was thinking Killer Robot Invasion, or Killer Vampire Invasion, or Killer Alien Invasion, or something similar. After about 30 seconds of waiting for the feeling to return to my arms and legs, I thought it was quite funny!
This may or may not have been part of a well-intentioned fraternity prank, but I was once duct taped up and dropped off on the side of the road in Death Valley. I was watching the horizon–while being engulfed by perfect silence–and just waiting for people who had been messed up by nuclear testing (a la Hills Have Eyes) to come feast on my limbs or a some “friendly” truck driver to “rescue” me (a la Breakdown). To make matters more eerily familiar, the cell phone I was given had no reception and it was over 100 degrees. I also happened to be wearing my South Park pajamas, but I suppose that doesn’t really play a role here.
Years ago some girlfriends & I drove up to Wisc. to visit a male strip club for a bachelorette party -in Feb., on a snowy night, in a rural area. Our friend who was driving got mad for some reason & was driving like a madwoman on an icy road. As our car slid all over the road, my friend & I in the back seat resembled the little old ladies in the old Wendy’s commercial from Clara Peller days. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-ka_edE-CM&NR=1) We spun off the road just past a VW Beetle that was on its roof (it was already there, we didn’t crash into it). Suddenly we were surrounded by cops asking if we were hurt & where the people from the Beetle were (???) We got lots of stares as we climbed out in our leather pants/heels/studded belts/glittery tops of the ’80s. The cops rolled their eyes when they heard where we were going & let us go.
My life is just like Dazed and Confused…except that I’m in college. It also helps that I live in Huntsville Texas where the original story took place.
A few years ago I was dating this really nice guy (or so I thought) and things were going quite well until a few months into the relationship he mentioned a recent visit from his ex-wife. Confused I asked him what ex-wife he was talking about since he had only been married once and she had died from an illness. He proceeded to inform me that she wasn’t sick nor dead…she had divorced him and he was embarassed to admit it, so he just told women she had died. About that time in a classic soap opera moment, there was a knock at his door, and there she stood alive and breathing. I made a quick excuse, left, and never talked to him again. To this day I can thankfully say it has been my only experience with a “back from the dead” wife….or anyone else.
Taking a left turn off of Rock Creek Parkway in DC one night (it goes through the big forest-ey looking park where Chandra Levy disappeared), my car hit the median with a loud thud.
Assuming I’d blown a tire (they had just been purchased a week before), we pulled my car over only to discover that I had TWO flat tires on the lefthand side.
I’d always assumed this sort of thing only happened in movies.
AAA sent a guy who resembled the one-handed truck driver from “adventures in babysitting” to pick me up and sent my car to a chop shop for new tires.
After that it was all back to normal, but the night was so spooky that I now carry two spare tires in my Jetta.
Also related to that same car, I once got a boot and went to the DMV to get it removed. Turns out I had nearly $2000 in parking tickets. That moment felt like I was in a horror movie.
Back in fall of 1995 I had a 1974 Vespa. Typical of old vespas, this one broke down a lot.
When the cute girl at the scootershop fixed it for free, I asked her out to dinner to repay her.
She accepted. Dinner was great. The woman claimed to be single, except for this ex boyfriend who’d gone to jail. She’d dumped him, but had paid his restitution…
Subject dropped, the girl invited me over for “wine n kisses”. At 3 AM, we were stirred when the buzzer to her apartment went off NON STOP.
Realizing it was her ex boyfriend, she told me to leave as he’d likely kick my azz when he came up. So I literally ran out the back door with my pants in my hands at 3 AM.
How silly I looked hit me, but I couldn’t get my scooter from the girl’s parking lot because Mr. Ex-con ex-boyfriend was going to pummel me.
The Vespa didn’t leave the parking lot until spring.
Turned out the guy was a buddy’s roomate. When he heard me tell the story, guy said “that was you?”
Right after I watched “Catch & Release” with Jennifer Garner, my friend told me about how she found out her boyfriend had a two year old daughter from a girl he had been seeing in another city where he was suppose to be working. My friend and him had been dating for five years, and she only found out because the girl called her phone wanting to know why her number was on her boyfriend’s phone.
My sister and I drove across the country from NY to LA, and mostly stuck to name motels/hotels, but one night we were so tired we pulled into a very Psycho-esque motel off the highway. The guy behind the desk was so creepy and kept eyeballing my sister, and there was an actual stuffed bird on the desk. We got to our room and it was filthy. Then I discoverd a very dark brown stain that looked a lot like dried blood on one of the beds! We pretty much ran to the car, and we drove until we found a nice brightly lit Super 8. Even then neither of us wanted to get in the shower!
I often used to become suspicious that my life might perhaps be like The Truman Show, and that the whole movie was a message meant to help me figure it out. Then I realized how entirely implausible that was and how self-obsessed I’d have to be to actually believe it. Also, I’ve done some traveling so it would have to be an incredibly large dome.
In college a friend and I wanted to go skydiving. The nearest place was about 2 hours away in a different state, and the only time we could go was late at night to be ready to jump the next morning. So it was late at night, driving through rural farmland with these spider-like farm machinery that in the dark looked like aliens. We got lost for a few hours and stumbled upon a rundown Indian reservation. During our wandering in the country we passed this parked pickup a dozen times and each time there was this guy just sitting there looking out towards the road, staring. For hours. We finally found the place and set up our tent in the dark. In the morning we realized we were in the middle of the dirt parking lot. No idea how we missed the cars parked around us.
When I was about 14 my parents and sister went out of town for a weekend (not the first time, not a big deal). Sitting in my upstairs bedroom on the computer with the TV on, I became convinced I could hear voices downstairs. After muting and un-muting the TV several times, I finally heard legitimate voices going on downstairs. But, being the logical 14 year-old girl I was, I tried to convince myself it was nothing and there was no one breaking in my house, but was still scared sh!tless. I went to my closet and got a tennis racket (not the ideal weapon, but the best I had) and tiptoed down the stairs, standing in the hallway until I heard something. After a few minutes I could clearly hear someone speaking in my sister’s room, but it was empty. After a few minutes of terrified investigation, I found a backpack in her closet with a walkie-talkie inside. She’d left it on and it was picking up a conversation of some people on the same frequency.
Scariest. Moment. Ever.
Also, I was 7 when “Jurassic Park” came out, and there was a thunderstorm that night- to this day, when I hear that low, reverberating thunder in the distance, I have to pause for a second to convince myself it is not the footsteps of a T-Rex.
my dating life…
where are all the decent (non hovering) men???
Thats happened to me soo many times. I’ll be in school, and a second later, I think I’m in Saved by the Bell. (It doesn’t help that our school has lockers JUST like those either)
do dreams count? cuz then i would have had a lot of those moments… but in waking ive had one. it was raining really hard, & i could feel the earth moving, & i just thought “holy crap dinosaurs are still real!!”
When I was little our family rented the Truman Show. After that my little brother & I were convinced we were all on tv and the cameras were hidden throughout the house. We were afraid to use the bathroom because we figured there were cameras behind the mirrors and we figured it was the reason our dad wouldn’t get cable – we were being shown on a cable channel.
Last weekend, my friends and I drove to a haunted forest about an hour from our homes. Of course, we didn’t print reverse directions, our navigator was a bit unsure of herself and those of us in the back seat weren’t paying attention. Soon, we find that the two way road narrows and enters a heavily wooded area with lots of hills. Despite my and one other girl vocalizing our belief that we needed to go the other way, we went through this. After about 20 minutes of driving, we finally turned around after some narrow misses of deer and the road turning to dirt. On our way back out, we all admitted we felt like we were in “Wrong Turn”.
That movie comes up a lot in my driving adventures. Recently, also stopped at a gas station that the pumps were open, the station was not. There were about 30 cats around. We were bracing for attack, whether from the cats or someone hiding behind the junked out cars.
A few years back a man in a nice suit named Hans came to my house for some uknown reason. Once I saw how he looked and heard his name I yelled yippy-ki-yay m*****f*****, head butted him, dragged to my second floor, and threw him from my bedroom window.