Nearly 20 years ago my friend and I returned to his dorm building after a long long night out, only to discover we were locked out. With nothing better to do, we sat outside on the stoop and planned to chat the hours away until 6am when the doors would reopen.
Before the dawn came, a man in his 80s almost walked past us. He stopped to ask for directions somewhere, maybe to a church. After our half-hearted attempt at giving him directions, he asked us a question. Small talk. And then another. And then the questions turned into statements (“my daughter also went to art school”), and then into short stories, then long stories. My friend and I — having nothing better to do at this early hour, and each recognizing this man wasn’t looking for a sermon but an audience — kept listening.
The old man’s long stories turned into deeply personal stories; of hunting deer with his father, of losing friends in the war… He went on and on, pausing occasionally to stare a thousand yards past us and let a patient tear make room for another.
An hour later, in a click, the man wished us a good day and went about his way. And with a click, the lobby door behind us unlocked, and we went on our way. We slept until noon and I mostly forgot what else happened the previous night, but I never forgot that early morning moment.
Those of us who are lucky to reach that age will surely have endless tales and thoughts to tell, and I hope we’re all lucky to find an attentive ear, whether from a stoop-sitting stranger or a taxi driver.
Back in high school, I fulfilled my community service requirement at a local nursing home. Several of the residents there had no local friends or family, and as a result, no visitors. I was tasked just with giving them someone to talk to.
What surprised me is that most of the residents did not want to talk to someone - they wanted to be left alone. Many assumed they'd be going home, and didn't want to build any friendships. The one exception who stood out was a man in what I believe was his late 70s, functionally deaf but still able to speak. I'd communicate with him by writing on a whiteboard, and letting him speak in response.
This man over the course of several weeks gave me his life's story - if I recall, he'd worked most of his life as a Boston firefighter. He had quite a bit to say, and I could tell that given the nature of interacting with him, no one else had really spent time talking with him since he'd become deaf. I don't know how long he had been deaf for, but I imagine this wasn't terribly different from being "locked in".
My second to last week at the nursing home, he told me that he'd said everything there was to say - he didn't have any more stories, but was happy to have seen me come back.
My last week there, I went to go see him anyway, only to find the bed clean and his things moved out. It turned out that he had passed away earlier in the week.
I'm happy that I was able to give him those few hours.
I had two fairly magical musical experiences with old guys during my college days.
One happened during my junior year. I lived in a house with two other guys, who were out of town for the night, so I was home alone. I was short on cash so decided to just stay home, and I was playing guitar out on the stoop of my house drinking from a bottle of cheap wine that was left over in the fridge. I was pretty delighted when two drunk guys threw a fiver on my porch as they passed by - I was definitely not playing to any level that deserved money, but it felt pretty awesome.
An older hippie looking guy came stumbling down the walk. He stopped and asked me if he could play something on my guitar. I was immediately nervous that the guy might run off with the guitar, but I hesitantly handed it over to him, and he strummed out a song which I had never heard before (Bob Dylan's She Belongs to Me). He was no rock star - his chord changes were sloppy, his voice was raspy and maybe a little off key. But he shared a wonderful song that I love to this day, then thanked me for letting him play and continued on his way. What a cool little moment, to meet this random stranger and be able to share that music.
The other moment was even more strange and magical, and happened about a year before. A buddy and I had been holed up in the house watching TV and smoking pot for a while, and we stepped out onto the stoop to have a cigarette. It was a beautiful spring afternoon, and we were just chatting, goofing around with accents and silly jokes, enjoying the fresh air and the leftovers of our weed high. All of sudden we heard this strange, ethereal music coming from down the street, and went silent as we strained to hear the sound. From the street corner emerged a man in a forest green suit, with a long white beard, carrying some sort of harp, and playing it beautifully as he walked by. The guy didn't acknowledge us in any way, and we were far too shocked to think of anything to say as he passed. We watched him walk away, still playing this almost angelic music, and the music faded as he got out of hearing distance. My friend and I stood there in stunned silence, until one of us asked, unbelievingly "did you see that too?" I never saw this guy on campus again after that day, but my friend and I still joke about the time we saw an actual wizard on campus. If I hadn't had a friend with me, I'm not sure I would believe that it was real, I'd chalk it up to some vivid dream or hallucination or something. But again, what a magical thing to have happen.
I had some miraculous wizard encounters too, with Jesus Mouse!
There was a nice bohemian coffee shop on Haight Street in San Francisco that I used to hang out at in the early 90's, and one of the regulars who called himself "Jesus Mouse" was an old freaky looking hippie dude in a costume of a Mickey Mouse hat, and long tail, and Jesus-like long beard and hair.
He also carried a wizardly walking stick topped with an ornate purple court jester's head with a curling tongue sticking out with a small key at the tip, and a thick worn spell book covered in fabric and sequins and runes that he'd sit and write in all the time.
(He made such an strong impression both visually and mentally, that I remember him in high definition!)
Occasionally tourists would walk in, look at him, do a double take, chat him up, and ask to take selfies with him, for which he would charge $5 a shot.
We talked occasionally, and over time he told me his backstory about how he represented the combination of the most prominent icons of American mythology, and he just happened to know how to pass the official test that the Vatican used to determine whether or not somebody who thought he was Jesus actually WAS the Second Coming of Jesus H Christ, Our Lord.
He never explicitly stated it, but it became evident that he wasn't a lunatic, he didn't actually BELIEVE he was Jesus, or believed IN Jesus, but he did believe the Catholic Church was totally full of shit, and he just somehow happened to know how to prove he was Jesus according to the Vatican's own rules.
(However he never told me the actual secret answer to prove you're Jesus, so don't ask, since I would have long since proven I was Jesus had I known.)
His lifelong mission was to prove to the Vatican on their own terms that he really was Jesus H Christ incarnate, and then once established, he would insist that they liquidate all of their hoards of precious artwork, and give away the money to the poor.
He told me about how in his past glory days he'd led parades of hippies down Haight Street to Golden Gate Park, where he publicly declared himself Jesus and demanded the Catholic Church liquidate and distribute all of their treasures to the poor.
And another story about how he had once ran into a sympathetic rich lady from a royal family in Europe who was intrigued by his story (by God, who wouldn't be???), and she had some connections who knew how to get him into the Vatican to meet the Pope and take the test.
So she arranged to fly him out to Europe, and he got into the Vatican, then he told them his story and gave them his proof, and they beat the shit out of him and dumped him outside onto the street, so he never got to meet the Pope.
He also related how he'd smuggled LSD into Europe by cutting blotter paper up into little colored pieces of paper and gluing them all over his scepter as decoration, and nobody in customs or airport security was remotely suspicious about it.
So apparently this guy really did get around, possibly by using an Infinite Improbability Drive:
The last time I saw him was when I was in Amsterdam for the InterCHI '93 conference, and a bunch of us went out to the Homegrown Fantasy Coffeeshop on Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, and we're all sitting inside doing what you do inside a coffeeshop, and I happened to glance up and look out the window, and there was Jesus Mouse, ambling down the sidewalk!!!
He's kind of hard not to miss, and easy to recognize, so I pointed and shouted "IT'S JESUS MOUSE!!!", ran outside, flagged him down, invited him in, and he joined us, introduced himself, hung out for a while, and told us his stories.
I don't know what I would have done if it hadn't really been him, since the other people I was with might have thought I was crazy! Instead, it was one of those magical moments, seared into my memory.
Later on I found out a lady friend of mine and he had been lovers, and she said he was a kind and interesting dude, he was pretty well known around the Haight/Ashbury scene, and did like to travel around the world, but that he'd since passed away.
When I was in college, I joined a community service fraternity. One of the most memorable and heartwarming event was our visit to a retirement home. We were there to help the staff, but the best part was sitting with the residents and listening to their stories. Stories of war, stories of love, stories of friendship. Stories waiting for an attentive and friendly ear. Sometimes, all you need to do is just listen.
This is another thing which cell phones have killed. Today odds are you would be trying to call or text to get in or just browsing on your phone with no time to listen to some old man’s stories .
Perhaps, once a year, there ought to be an "Official offline day", where all cellular networks are down, so humans can have such moments of serendipity again.
Glad folks liked the story I tapped out with my thumbs while waiting for my coffee order. I added it to my journal in case someone wants to share it 24 years from now: https://www.gregkogan.com/journal/stoop/
I might be building a mental image that was not your experience, but I'm getting a real "My Diner with Andre" feel to your story. Just... nothing going on. One location. A lot of anecdotes and stories that add up to both nothing and everything, and then it's over and life unpauses.
I'm not sure exactly how I feel, other than I'm tremendously moved and I think hopeful to have many experiences where I get to be both sides of that conversation. Thanks for sharing.
For some strange reason this story really made me upset. Why is it so extraordinary - to talk to an elderly person? I talk to elderly people all the time and they are normal humans with tons of stories. Why is this so strange to the OP they remembered it 20 years later? Do we ignore the elderly this much?
Life can be full of 'magical moments' if we just look for them. Often we don't even have to seek them out, just don't ignore them when they come calling...
A few days in on my first trip to New York City, I had decided to visit Central Park. On the subway there, I (Korean-American) noticed out of the corner of my eye an elderly Asian woman who was sitting right next to me, keep staring at me then looking away multiple times. After a few minutes of this, I stared right back at her and she asked me, "Ni zhong guo ren?" (are you Chinese)? Luckily, I was almost done graduating from college and in my last few semesters took Chinese as an elective. I said to her in my crappy Chinese "Bu. Wo shi han guo ren. Ke shi, wo zhi dao zhong wen yi dian dian." (No, I'm Korean, but I know a little Chinese.) She said something I couldn't understand, and was pointing to some paper with an address on it. I asked her in Chinese where she was going and she kept pointing to the paper and I realized it was the bus terminal. She looked deathly scared and afraid as if she was going to get lost, so I quickly looked up the stop for the bus terminal and I told her to follow me. She's got two heavy pieces of luggage, and I'm carrying it for her all the way to the terminal, to ticketing. I do my best to translate for her, get her the tickets to her destination of Flushing, New York. I guide her to the right gate and as I'm about to leave, she stops me, thanks me, and hands me some ginseng drink and a Christian tract. I take the drink, and I hand her back the tract. She's like, "no, take it." I say to her, "No, it's ok. Ssang-di (God), I believe. I believe in Jesus." There's a bit of a glad shock on her face and says, "Ohhhhh." We part ways. The fear on her face disappeared and I could see she felt comfortable and relaxed as she waited at the gate.
It was just an awkward, but fun and memorable experience I'll never forget. I was a little annoyed early on cause there was only a few hours of daylight left and I wanted to spend as much time at Central Park, but it was just nice to help someone who seemed in desperate need of help. The funny thing is, this delay to Central Park actually timed it so that I got into a nice conversation with an older woman who sat on a bench next to me in the park.
That is a beautiful and heartwarming story. I am happy to observe that people like you are not unusual in New York. I have had several visits there where I stood trying to orient myself, and locals would stop and ask me where I wanted to go. And it’s not like I’m an attractive woman or anything.
I drove cabs PT in college. Usually the night shift on weekdays, which none of the FT drivers liked because demand was light.
One night, I got a call to a suburban address, a little white Cape-style house. It was a guy in his 30s, glasses and a mustache. He seemed a little anxious, and explained that he was visiting his mother at the hospital - St. Elizabeths in Boston. Something serious. It was just him and his mom living in the little Cape.
About a month later, the dispatcher sent me to the same address, again at night. It was him. His mother had died and he was absolutely shattered. Utter despair as I had never witnessed close up in my young life. I can't remember where he wanted to go. Honestly, I think he just wanted someone to talk with. And I did, as best I could.
I drove a taxi for about 3.5 years. Mostly it was random people going places. Taxi driving is not the most intellectually stimulating job, so I amused myself by talking to my passengers to figure out if they had anything to teach me. After a few shifts I became aware of a Metaphysical Matching Algorithm, where I was being sent specific passengers for reasons more than just 'transportation'.
I'm still in contact with a woman I met on my 8th shift. She txt'd me for a ride ~4 days after her taxi ride. I remembered her, but couldn't figure out why she'd decided to call me back: 'I talk to everyone, but I didn't talk to them'. On her follow up ride she reminded me of the little informative txt message I'd sent them after I'd driven away, and how that little act motivated her to reach out to me when she needed to go to the store for a suitcase. She eventually made a short film that was inspired by how we met. The specific details are all wrong, which is why it's only "inspired by a true story", lol. The series of passengers that led me to my future-friend was 1. passenger going home from the hospital in central Phoenix [delay], 2. lady going home to Mesa [transfer fare - 15 miles], 3. Grandma going to the pharmacy [delay], then I got my 'appointment' to meet my future-friend in the metropolitan area's far southeast corner.
Sometimes my random questions revealed that my passenger had interesting experiences, such as the fellow who'd spent a lot of time on the secret bases in Nevada: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33640535 (My username was inspired by K5 user "Zombie Jesus Christ", whom I eventually visited in jail in California. Followup comment in this thread tells of my username's origin story.)
I've commented before about the passenger I bailed out of jail. I distinctly remember the night I met him at the convenience store at Cave Creek & Bell Rd: "Are you available?" "Sure, hop in." He'd come to Arizona on a technology contract with a big bank, but the contract was canceled. Then his van and everything he owned got stolen. I don't remember the series of fares that led me to be in exactly his location that night... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34157865
Lots of stories like this. One passenger leads to the next. When I was between passengers sometimes I followed my intuitions trying to figure out where I'd find my next passenger. I tried to talk to everyone: everyone has a story & I tried to figure out if they had something I thought interesting. Sometimes I had the sense that I had 'appointments', othertimes I had the sense that there was no one else to meet that day.
One of my standard lines of inquiry for couples, or people who mentioned their relationship, was 'how did you meet?' Sometimes it was a boring story ("met in elementary school"), sometimes intuition made their improbable connection possible.
You’d like Arthur Koestler’s “Roots of Coincidence”, if you haven’t already read it.
I’d wave this away as metaphysical waffle if I also hadn’t had a few too many almost ordained seeming moments. Right place, right time sort of thing, what on earth are you doing in this cornfield miles from anywhere at 3am, never mind me?
I have been fortunate enough (privileged enough?) to feel comfortable picking up hitchhikers (or simply people walking along the road) over the years, and while most aren't particularly noteworthy, a few have been rough.
One teenage boy had just been thrown out of his house, with nothing other than a torn shirt and shorts, by his drunk father. I drove him to his girlfriend's place.
One desperate father had taken a bus as far as he could, but still had miles to walk to get to his mother's place and back home before his kids would wake up in the morning.
I wrote about those and my other recollections a while back[1], but none as memorable as this piece.
I did this once while returning from a road trip from Boston to the northern tip of New Hampshire and back. Younger and dumber?
I picked up some 50+ year old man with very long brown hair (down to his butt). He was definitely an outsider. Told me stories, how the FBI interrogated him once for having a book (I forget which one). How he used to work as a guard at the local jail, then as a cook at a castle-like hotel (both in the area). How his stress free life and eating local herbs/forest plants has prevented his hair from graying. Talked about his tiny, simple house with two rooms. He told me about American ginseng (illegal to harvest btw), and we pulled off the side of the road to find some. The plant made part of my lips swell a bit. Had that "lots of enzymes" flavor (like how peaches/strawberries/etc can tickle the inside of your mouth, but much stronger).
He said he had an wife in Kentucky that he hadn't finished divorcing, and then he asked me to drive him all the way back to Boston. He didn't even request to stop by his house. I let him out in downtown and he walked off into the night, presumably towards the airport.
Edit: oh yeah, i forgot that craziest part. He said people have been lnyched during his time living there. (Sorry if this is too dark, but all things considered, its hard to believe everything he said)
years ago, i picked up a couple of very young and beautiful women in downtown Denver hitchhiking up to Winter Park. They were from Chile, barely spoke English, and worked at the resort for the season. I asked them to promise me they'd never hitchhike again from where i picked them up. I had no interest in seeing their photos/bodybags on the news.
I regularly pick people up, but wouldn’t recommend it unless you’ve really given it thought.
For me - I’m a 6’2” bearded dude. I drive a Jeep and almost never have the doors or top on it in the summer. I’m also armed and have had some training.
Being in an open vehicle means that anyone around me in traffic can see what’s going on, so I’m reasonably confident a hitchhiker isn’t going to try to take me hostage or directly threaten me with a weapon. It also couldn’t be any better ventilated, so I’m able to pick people up whose “odor” would others make it difficult to get a ride.
I’ve probably picked up 100 or more hitchhikers at this point. I’ve had a couple that were obviously unhinged, more than a few people who were drunk or stoned to the point they had no business in public, and a surprising number of people who I would have never expected to take me up on my offer of a ride.
One of my favorite memories of this is when I found myself in Charlottesville, VA at about 1am, wide awake, in a growing snowstorm with nothing to do. My Jeep didn’t have doors or a top even though it was ~10ºF out. There was a little over a foot of snow on the ground, and the city buses had stopped as a result. I ended up driving back and forth all over downtown as the bars closed, taking college kids back to their homes when I found them stumbling through the snow trying walk back.
I often wonder how many of them woke up the next day questioning their own sanity. “How did I get home last night? I remember walking, then got a ride in a Go-Kart… Wait a sec - was that Hagrid driving!?”
I've been a hitchhiker and I've picked up hitchhikers though not in years as they're less common today where I live and I've been a parent and I won't pick up hitchhikers with my kids in the car. So while I was going to say "I don't think there's much risk" I guess I must admit I do acknowledge some risk involved, given that I won't do it with my kids aboard.
But overall hitchhikers are people just like you and me, the difference being they haven't got a car, obviously. I figure the worst that would happen is I'm robbed and my car stolen, which would stink but the risk is infinitesimal and the benefit I perceive in helping out my fellow human is worth it to me. Notably, I am male; my calculous would likely be different if I were female.
There's also the typical caveat of minding one's common sense & gut. If someone looks like a basket case I'm unlikely to pick them up, or if it's an odd hour/past dark, the area is remote etc. But someone on an busy onramp to I-40 during daytime, why not?
While hitchhiking, I was once picked up by a mother with her young children in the backseat. It seemed odd even to me that she would take such a risk with a stranger, but in the course of the drive she explained that her eldest daughter was a serial hitchhiker and that it gave her peace of mind to provide the sort of positive encounters that she hoped her daughter would experience.
I've experienced both sides, and been more afraid as a hitchhiker than as the driver, mostly from terrible driving vs. any direct bodily threat. I'm a large male too, though maybe always-connected & cell phones would actually make this safer for women?
You just need to be prepared to out crazy whatever you encounter. My plan, if it ever went sideways, was to pin the throttle and take my hands off the wheel. Fortunately it never came to that.
I used to work for the fruit companies senior support.
We didn't technically have the capacity for long term relationships with customers, but one woman had a lot of trouble with her fruitpad. She had MS, and her fingers didn't work. So she kept getting angrier and angrier at tier 1 support people who were granted completely useless.
Her issue is that she needed 12 attempts at everything because of her hands, and because of her age she needed the instructions every time. Simple things like, purchasing a song and downloading it were quite an ordeal for her.
After the first time we spoke, I left the ticket open with a note that I had to follow up for some reason. And I did. And we got to talking. She was in an old age home where her kids had left her before they went overseas. She didn't resent them at all tbh, in fact she needed her fruitpad to communicate with them. We left the first ticket open for a month and communicated back and forth. I don't know if management caught wind but they certainly didn't intervene. I guess I just kept her company after a certain point. She always had a book or something she needed adding, and that would always without fail turn into a minimum 1 hour phone call. But seniority bought be a lot of leeway with my stats and honestly I didn't give a shit. We talked about what her kids were up to, and who the worst nurse was that sort of thing.
One day I was handed a new contract to sign that would also give a large blue entity first dibs on anything I built at home. I had just signed on to a software project with a friend and wasn't going to sign his hard work away. They walked me out of the building because it was too hard to get the large blue legal firm to change a contract. So I never got to say goodbye.
In 2014, I've met in Krakow a Ukrainian woman in her sixties, feeding pigeons just next to the Wisla river. It wasn't anything uncommon, during the Crimean crisis hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians migrated to Poland. She asked me in Polish/Ukrainian how to reach the main square — she has been in Krakow for many days but hasn't been able to see the city attractions. I had few minutes to spare so I decided to walk her to the old city (~15 min walk). The short walk transformed into a tour over the restaurants — we had to visit every kitchen to ask if they would employ her as a kitchen aid; then over the churches — she was an orthodox, I believe, but she prayed in every catholic church for her family, Ukraine and finally, for me. When we have finally reached the main square, she was so authentically delighted with the place — she stopped everywhere to admire and marvel on various old buildings and... tourists. She was so happy to be able to talk (me, being a poor substitute for a translator) with tourists from USA and western Europe. Tourists were also happy to give her some small souvenirs (e.g. very small American flag you can attach to your backpack).
All in all, the short walk took few hours, she was very talkative and I've learned a lot about her life in the central Ukraine and I've been invited to visit her anytime. The thing I will remember the most is how she appreciated the world around her, everything was so interesting and new — a world-view foreign to most of the people I know. It was a very enriching walk and I don't regret it, even if it destroyed my daily routine ;)
> I do not think that I have ever done anything in my life that was any more important.
My grandmother was in hospital on palatial care. We didn't know how long she would have, but it wasn't much.
I look an awful lot like my uncle due to having curly hair. I sat with her holding her hand for hours, just being with her and making sure she wasn't alone. She thought I was my uncle most of the time, but it didn't matter. (Very confused nurses when she called me her son.)
I still consider it one of the most important things I've done. Being there for someone in their final days is sad, but also a gift if they can be provided some comfort.
Readit News
Before the dawn came, a man in his 80s almost walked past us. He stopped to ask for directions somewhere, maybe to a church. After our half-hearted attempt at giving him directions, he asked us a question. Small talk. And then another. And then the questions turned into statements (“my daughter also went to art school”), and then into short stories, then long stories. My friend and I — having nothing better to do at this early hour, and each recognizing this man wasn’t looking for a sermon but an audience — kept listening.
The old man’s long stories turned into deeply personal stories; of hunting deer with his father, of losing friends in the war… He went on and on, pausing occasionally to stare a thousand yards past us and let a patient tear make room for another.
An hour later, in a click, the man wished us a good day and went about his way. And with a click, the lobby door behind us unlocked, and we went on our way. We slept until noon and I mostly forgot what else happened the previous night, but I never forgot that early morning moment.
Those of us who are lucky to reach that age will surely have endless tales and thoughts to tell, and I hope we’re all lucky to find an attentive ear, whether from a stoop-sitting stranger or a taxi driver.
What surprised me is that most of the residents did not want to talk to someone - they wanted to be left alone. Many assumed they'd be going home, and didn't want to build any friendships. The one exception who stood out was a man in what I believe was his late 70s, functionally deaf but still able to speak. I'd communicate with him by writing on a whiteboard, and letting him speak in response.
This man over the course of several weeks gave me his life's story - if I recall, he'd worked most of his life as a Boston firefighter. He had quite a bit to say, and I could tell that given the nature of interacting with him, no one else had really spent time talking with him since he'd become deaf. I don't know how long he had been deaf for, but I imagine this wasn't terribly different from being "locked in".
My second to last week at the nursing home, he told me that he'd said everything there was to say - he didn't have any more stories, but was happy to have seen me come back.
My last week there, I went to go see him anyway, only to find the bed clean and his things moved out. It turned out that he had passed away earlier in the week.
I'm happy that I was able to give him those few hours.
One happened during my junior year. I lived in a house with two other guys, who were out of town for the night, so I was home alone. I was short on cash so decided to just stay home, and I was playing guitar out on the stoop of my house drinking from a bottle of cheap wine that was left over in the fridge. I was pretty delighted when two drunk guys threw a fiver on my porch as they passed by - I was definitely not playing to any level that deserved money, but it felt pretty awesome.
An older hippie looking guy came stumbling down the walk. He stopped and asked me if he could play something on my guitar. I was immediately nervous that the guy might run off with the guitar, but I hesitantly handed it over to him, and he strummed out a song which I had never heard before (Bob Dylan's She Belongs to Me). He was no rock star - his chord changes were sloppy, his voice was raspy and maybe a little off key. But he shared a wonderful song that I love to this day, then thanked me for letting him play and continued on his way. What a cool little moment, to meet this random stranger and be able to share that music.
The other moment was even more strange and magical, and happened about a year before. A buddy and I had been holed up in the house watching TV and smoking pot for a while, and we stepped out onto the stoop to have a cigarette. It was a beautiful spring afternoon, and we were just chatting, goofing around with accents and silly jokes, enjoying the fresh air and the leftovers of our weed high. All of sudden we heard this strange, ethereal music coming from down the street, and went silent as we strained to hear the sound. From the street corner emerged a man in a forest green suit, with a long white beard, carrying some sort of harp, and playing it beautifully as he walked by. The guy didn't acknowledge us in any way, and we were far too shocked to think of anything to say as he passed. We watched him walk away, still playing this almost angelic music, and the music faded as he got out of hearing distance. My friend and I stood there in stunned silence, until one of us asked, unbelievingly "did you see that too?" I never saw this guy on campus again after that day, but my friend and I still joke about the time we saw an actual wizard on campus. If I hadn't had a friend with me, I'm not sure I would believe that it was real, I'd chalk it up to some vivid dream or hallucination or something. But again, what a magical thing to have happen.
There was a nice bohemian coffee shop on Haight Street in San Francisco that I used to hang out at in the early 90's, and one of the regulars who called himself "Jesus Mouse" was an old freaky looking hippie dude in a costume of a Mickey Mouse hat, and long tail, and Jesus-like long beard and hair.
He also carried a wizardly walking stick topped with an ornate purple court jester's head with a curling tongue sticking out with a small key at the tip, and a thick worn spell book covered in fabric and sequins and runes that he'd sit and write in all the time.
(He made such an strong impression both visually and mentally, that I remember him in high definition!)
Occasionally tourists would walk in, look at him, do a double take, chat him up, and ask to take selfies with him, for which he would charge $5 a shot.
We talked occasionally, and over time he told me his backstory about how he represented the combination of the most prominent icons of American mythology, and he just happened to know how to pass the official test that the Vatican used to determine whether or not somebody who thought he was Jesus actually WAS the Second Coming of Jesus H Christ, Our Lord.
He never explicitly stated it, but it became evident that he wasn't a lunatic, he didn't actually BELIEVE he was Jesus, or believed IN Jesus, but he did believe the Catholic Church was totally full of shit, and he just somehow happened to know how to prove he was Jesus according to the Vatican's own rules.
(However he never told me the actual secret answer to prove you're Jesus, so don't ask, since I would have long since proven I was Jesus had I known.)
His lifelong mission was to prove to the Vatican on their own terms that he really was Jesus H Christ incarnate, and then once established, he would insist that they liquidate all of their hoards of precious artwork, and give away the money to the poor.
He told me about how in his past glory days he'd led parades of hippies down Haight Street to Golden Gate Park, where he publicly declared himself Jesus and demanded the Catholic Church liquidate and distribute all of their treasures to the poor.
And another story about how he had once ran into a sympathetic rich lady from a royal family in Europe who was intrigued by his story (by God, who wouldn't be???), and she had some connections who knew how to get him into the Vatican to meet the Pope and take the test.
So she arranged to fly him out to Europe, and he got into the Vatican, then he told them his story and gave them his proof, and they beat the shit out of him and dumped him outside onto the street, so he never got to meet the Pope.
He also related how he'd smuggled LSD into Europe by cutting blotter paper up into little colored pieces of paper and gluing them all over his scepter as decoration, and nobody in customs or airport security was remotely suspicious about it.
So apparently this guy really did get around, possibly by using an Infinite Improbability Drive:
The last time I saw him was when I was in Amsterdam for the InterCHI '93 conference, and a bunch of us went out to the Homegrown Fantasy Coffeeshop on Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, and we're all sitting inside doing what you do inside a coffeeshop, and I happened to glance up and look out the window, and there was Jesus Mouse, ambling down the sidewalk!!!
He's kind of hard not to miss, and easy to recognize, so I pointed and shouted "IT'S JESUS MOUSE!!!", ran outside, flagged him down, invited him in, and he joined us, introduced himself, hung out for a while, and told us his stories.
I don't know what I would have done if it hadn't really been him, since the other people I was with might have thought I was crazy! Instead, it was one of those magical moments, seared into my memory.
Later on I found out a lady friend of mine and he had been lovers, and she said he was a kind and interesting dude, he was pretty well known around the Haight/Ashbury scene, and did like to travel around the world, but that he'd since passed away.
When I was in college, I joined a community service fraternity. One of the most memorable and heartwarming event was our visit to a retirement home. We were there to help the staff, but the best part was sitting with the residents and listening to their stories. Stories of war, stories of love, stories of friendship. Stories waiting for an attentive and friendly ear. Sometimes, all you need to do is just listen.
I look back at that day with fond memories.
I'm not sure exactly how I feel, other than I'm tremendously moved and I think hopeful to have many experiences where I get to be both sides of that conversation. Thanks for sharing.
https://genius.com/The-stranglers-midnight-summer-dream-lyri...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI7CB2UwSj4
It was just an awkward, but fun and memorable experience I'll never forget. I was a little annoyed early on cause there was only a few hours of daylight left and I wanted to spend as much time at Central Park, but it was just nice to help someone who seemed in desperate need of help. The funny thing is, this delay to Central Park actually timed it so that I got into a nice conversation with an older woman who sat on a bench next to me in the park.
Dead Comment
One night, I got a call to a suburban address, a little white Cape-style house. It was a guy in his 30s, glasses and a mustache. He seemed a little anxious, and explained that he was visiting his mother at the hospital - St. Elizabeths in Boston. Something serious. It was just him and his mom living in the little Cape.
About a month later, the dispatcher sent me to the same address, again at night. It was him. His mother had died and he was absolutely shattered. Utter despair as I had never witnessed close up in my young life. I can't remember where he wanted to go. Honestly, I think he just wanted someone to talk with. And I did, as best I could.
I'm still in contact with a woman I met on my 8th shift. She txt'd me for a ride ~4 days after her taxi ride. I remembered her, but couldn't figure out why she'd decided to call me back: 'I talk to everyone, but I didn't talk to them'. On her follow up ride she reminded me of the little informative txt message I'd sent them after I'd driven away, and how that little act motivated her to reach out to me when she needed to go to the store for a suitcase. She eventually made a short film that was inspired by how we met. The specific details are all wrong, which is why it's only "inspired by a true story", lol. The series of passengers that led me to my future-friend was 1. passenger going home from the hospital in central Phoenix [delay], 2. lady going home to Mesa [transfer fare - 15 miles], 3. Grandma going to the pharmacy [delay], then I got my 'appointment' to meet my future-friend in the metropolitan area's far southeast corner.
Sometimes my random questions revealed that my passenger had interesting experiences, such as the fellow who'd spent a lot of time on the secret bases in Nevada: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33640535 (My username was inspired by K5 user "Zombie Jesus Christ", whom I eventually visited in jail in California. Followup comment in this thread tells of my username's origin story.)
I've commented before about the passenger I bailed out of jail. I distinctly remember the night I met him at the convenience store at Cave Creek & Bell Rd: "Are you available?" "Sure, hop in." He'd come to Arizona on a technology contract with a big bank, but the contract was canceled. Then his van and everything he owned got stolen. I don't remember the series of fares that led me to be in exactly his location that night... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34157865
Lots of stories like this. One passenger leads to the next. When I was between passengers sometimes I followed my intuitions trying to figure out where I'd find my next passenger. I tried to talk to everyone: everyone has a story & I tried to figure out if they had something I thought interesting. Sometimes I had the sense that I had 'appointments', othertimes I had the sense that there was no one else to meet that day.
One of my standard lines of inquiry for couples, or people who mentioned their relationship, was 'how did you meet?' Sometimes it was a boring story ("met in elementary school"), sometimes intuition made their improbable connection possible.
(Intuition is when we do things that turn out well, without having a well-formed logical reason for doing so: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/17/well/intuition-gut-instin... )
One of my better stories was "Passenger Rescue" and "Passenger Rescue, Pt 2": http://www.taxiwars.org/2012/07/passenger-rescue.html / http://www.taxiwars.org/2012/08/passenger-rescue-pt-2.html (originally these were diaries on Kuro5hin.org [RIP]):
I’d wave this away as metaphysical waffle if I also hadn’t had a few too many almost ordained seeming moments. Right place, right time sort of thing, what on earth are you doing in this cornfield miles from anywhere at 3am, never mind me?
One teenage boy had just been thrown out of his house, with nothing other than a torn shirt and shorts, by his drunk father. I drove him to his girlfriend's place.
One desperate father had taken a bus as far as he could, but still had miles to walk to get to his mother's place and back home before his kids would wake up in the morning.
I wrote about those and my other recollections a while back[1], but none as memorable as this piece.
[1]: https://opposite-lock.com/topic/45077/hitchhikers-over-the-y...
I picked up some 50+ year old man with very long brown hair (down to his butt). He was definitely an outsider. Told me stories, how the FBI interrogated him once for having a book (I forget which one). How he used to work as a guard at the local jail, then as a cook at a castle-like hotel (both in the area). How his stress free life and eating local herbs/forest plants has prevented his hair from graying. Talked about his tiny, simple house with two rooms. He told me about American ginseng (illegal to harvest btw), and we pulled off the side of the road to find some. The plant made part of my lips swell a bit. Had that "lots of enzymes" flavor (like how peaches/strawberries/etc can tickle the inside of your mouth, but much stronger).
He said he had an wife in Kentucky that he hadn't finished divorcing, and then he asked me to drive him all the way back to Boston. He didn't even request to stop by his house. I let him out in downtown and he walked off into the night, presumably towards the airport.
Edit: oh yeah, i forgot that craziest part. He said people have been lnyched during his time living there. (Sorry if this is too dark, but all things considered, its hard to believe everything he said)
This is a food allergy. It's not "normal" for food to cause tingling or tickling.
For me - I’m a 6’2” bearded dude. I drive a Jeep and almost never have the doors or top on it in the summer. I’m also armed and have had some training.
Being in an open vehicle means that anyone around me in traffic can see what’s going on, so I’m reasonably confident a hitchhiker isn’t going to try to take me hostage or directly threaten me with a weapon. It also couldn’t be any better ventilated, so I’m able to pick people up whose “odor” would others make it difficult to get a ride.
I’ve probably picked up 100 or more hitchhikers at this point. I’ve had a couple that were obviously unhinged, more than a few people who were drunk or stoned to the point they had no business in public, and a surprising number of people who I would have never expected to take me up on my offer of a ride.
One of my favorite memories of this is when I found myself in Charlottesville, VA at about 1am, wide awake, in a growing snowstorm with nothing to do. My Jeep didn’t have doors or a top even though it was ~10ºF out. There was a little over a foot of snow on the ground, and the city buses had stopped as a result. I ended up driving back and forth all over downtown as the bars closed, taking college kids back to their homes when I found them stumbling through the snow trying walk back.
I often wonder how many of them woke up the next day questioning their own sanity. “How did I get home last night? I remember walking, then got a ride in a Go-Kart… Wait a sec - was that Hagrid driving!?”
But overall hitchhikers are people just like you and me, the difference being they haven't got a car, obviously. I figure the worst that would happen is I'm robbed and my car stolen, which would stink but the risk is infinitesimal and the benefit I perceive in helping out my fellow human is worth it to me. Notably, I am male; my calculous would likely be different if I were female.
There's also the typical caveat of minding one's common sense & gut. If someone looks like a basket case I'm unlikely to pick them up, or if it's an odd hour/past dark, the area is remote etc. But someone on an busy onramp to I-40 during daytime, why not?
Worst that happened to me was a very smelly drunk..
We didn't technically have the capacity for long term relationships with customers, but one woman had a lot of trouble with her fruitpad. She had MS, and her fingers didn't work. So she kept getting angrier and angrier at tier 1 support people who were granted completely useless.
Her issue is that she needed 12 attempts at everything because of her hands, and because of her age she needed the instructions every time. Simple things like, purchasing a song and downloading it were quite an ordeal for her.
After the first time we spoke, I left the ticket open with a note that I had to follow up for some reason. And I did. And we got to talking. She was in an old age home where her kids had left her before they went overseas. She didn't resent them at all tbh, in fact she needed her fruitpad to communicate with them. We left the first ticket open for a month and communicated back and forth. I don't know if management caught wind but they certainly didn't intervene. I guess I just kept her company after a certain point. She always had a book or something she needed adding, and that would always without fail turn into a minimum 1 hour phone call. But seniority bought be a lot of leeway with my stats and honestly I didn't give a shit. We talked about what her kids were up to, and who the worst nurse was that sort of thing.
One day I was handed a new contract to sign that would also give a large blue entity first dibs on anything I built at home. I had just signed on to a software project with a friend and wasn't going to sign his hard work away. They walked me out of the building because it was too hard to get the large blue legal firm to change a contract. So I never got to say goodbye.
All in all, the short walk took few hours, she was very talkative and I've learned a lot about her life in the central Ukraine and I've been invited to visit her anytime. The thing I will remember the most is how she appreciated the world around her, everything was so interesting and new — a world-view foreign to most of the people I know. It was a very enriching walk and I don't regret it, even if it destroyed my daily routine ;)
My grandmother was in hospital on palatial care. We didn't know how long she would have, but it wasn't much.
I look an awful lot like my uncle due to having curly hair. I sat with her holding her hand for hours, just being with her and making sure she wasn't alone. She thought I was my uncle most of the time, but it didn't matter. (Very confused nurses when she called me her son.)
I still consider it one of the most important things I've done. Being there for someone in their final days is sad, but also a gift if they can be provided some comfort.