The Weirdo Magnet

You know -- I'm beginning to think that I just attract all the weird people in my general vicinity. They may not be drawn to precisely me, but there's an energy field or something about me that makes them think they can let go all of their scruples, morals, bodily functions, whatever.

Here are some examples of the weirdity:

*Today at work, I was toodling along, happily, in my classroom, getting ready for the end of the day. There was a knock at the door, and a man wearing a yellow shirt poked his head in the room. He says that he's with a maintenance crew, and they're laying down pellets to kill off the fire ants. He wants us to keep the kids away from the pellets. Okay, good to know, we think. Our head custodian arrives a few minutes later, and we casually mention to him about the guy and the crew finally working on the ant problem. He frowns, and says there's not supposed to be any crew out there today. He finds the guy still wandering around, and asks him who is he, does he have permission to be on campus, has he signed in at the office, etc. Yellow Shirt says, yeah -- his crew is on the other side of the campus with the truck, and the Principal arranged all this, yada, yada, yada... The head custodian, feeling something was not quite kosher here, goes to the main office. He learns no one has signed in as being on campus, the Principal has NO idea what this guy was talking about, and that anyone who ever comes to the school will always be in our school system's uniforms. The uniforms are grey jumpsuit-looking things. Head Custodian and the Principal head out the door, and see Yellow Shirt hauling ass away from the school on a *bicycle.* They give chase, but he cuts through a church parking lot into the woods, and is quickly lost. Was he just some random whackjob? Was he a non-custodial parent, looking for a particular child? Was he some guy looking for an unoccupied classroom to steal things? We may never know. That's the danger of having an open campus. We locked our classroom door for the rest of the day.

*Last night, JF, Offspring, and I went to JF's favorite haunt of late -- a local Mexican restaurant. We went to have a nice, leisurely dinner. At the table behind us, however, a marriage was fracturing. The man, who either has made a lifetime habit of abusing WAY too many drugs or has had some sort of stroke, is at once trying to piss off *and* placate his wife. He keeps daring her to leave, but getting mad when she tries. I hear very little of his side of the conversation, due to the fact that he's facing away from me. The woman is a lot more strident, and walks out twice, only to return both times. She keeps saying the marriage is over, and at one point, even throws food at him. People -- if your marriage is disentegrating, it's probably best if you don't have that discussion in public. That way, other people don't have to hear the horrible things you say to each other, and they don't get spattered with your dinner leavings in the process.

*A student asks me today when I'm going to have my baby. I let the little guy know that there's *not* a baby in there, that Mrs. K is just a little too porky for these pants. He's crushed when he finds out he's made an error. He says that he really wanted to play with my baby when it was borned. I offered him a sticker instead, and that seemed to have resolved the issue. Too bad it doesn't make my hips any less wide.

*(Okay, this didn't happen recently, but it's still proof positive that I'm surrounded by frickin' weirdos...) I once had a boyfriend in college break up with me because he felt his job was suffering. He said that he didn't want to hurt me, but he felt like he really needed to devote more time to his work. That would have been admirable in some circumstances, but he worked at Home Depot. It's not like he was a brain surgeon.

*We just paid off the mortgage on our house in June, but we have yet to receive the deed. I try and try to get an actual human on the phone for days, but it hasn't seemed to pan out yet. Before we paid off the mortgage, we got one last bill that told us that the remaining money in the escrow account would cover the property taxes. Today, we get a bill for the quarterly taxes. Do *we* pay this bill? Does the mortgage company take of this until the end of the year? Should I pay it, or forward the bill to the mortgage company? Will I EVER get a straight answer? Will I ever talk to an actual human who can help me?

*I realized the other day that I may be out $250. I had had to pay this money in advance for a conference I'm attending, but was then granted "financial assistance." I got $225 in assistance. While I'm really glad that I got the assistance because it'll really help with extra costs like gas and meals, do I get reimbursed for the money I've already laid out, or should I just call it even, and not make a big deal out of it? Shouldn't someone from the company have contacted me about this?

My best friend just called (OzChick works with me at my school as well) and was wondering what the deal was with Yellow Shirt. When she went to the office at the end of the day on an errand, she saw the Principal, a police officer, a *campus* Police officer, the Assistant Principal, the teacher who is our official "problem solver", and another teacher all huddled together. They were debating the whole Yellow Shirt fracas, and trying to find out who he might have been, and why he was there. All she was told was that we had an "intruder situation."

*sigh* Weirdness abounds.

UPDATE: I just wanted to add that I thought of another weird thing -- I was commenting to R2K's about JF and his all-pervasive juggling habits. He carries his leather juggling bags with him everywhere we go. They are more appropriately called "bags", but we often refer to them as "balls." He takes the balls with him to work, to the beach, to the grocery store, to the Mall, to restaurants, with us when we go camping.... He will often ask me to put them in my bag, and it freaks people out to hear him in, say -- WalMart -- saying, "Honey, will you put my balls in your purse?" People look at him very shocked, until they see him, with five balls in his outstretched hands, and me with an open pocketbook.

And, if we happen to be in Wal-Mart without his juggling balls (which almost never happens) he entertains people with his stunning Toilet-Plunger Juggling routine.

As I said -- weirdness magnet.