Surreal moments

IronDuke

Ancient Mariner
We've all had them. Those moments in life where the world gets so weird, so surreal, that the only thing you can do is sit back and take it all in.

My moment of surreal zen came a few months ago. I had just finished moving a few boxes of personal things out of my parents' home, when I decided to take a short break. I put on some coffee and helped myself to a few oat cakes. I rarely watch TV (I don't own one of my own - the computer is enough for me), but since there's not much else to do at my parents' home, I decided I'd flip through the channels to see what was on.

The sports channel sucks.
The History channel was showing a film I'd seen before.
CNN is for the plebs.
I continued to advance through the various channels. A distinctive noise indicated that my coffee was ready to pour. I left the rec room and went into the kitchen, poured my coffee, and helped myself to another oat cake.

I returned to the rec room - it had the most comfortable chair in the house, after all. I had left the TV on a random channel when I got up to get my coffee. I came back into the room, looked at the TV, and stopped.

I had found the Home Shopping Network. All product showcases and silly marketing tricks. All the time.

I would normally have turned off the TV or changed the channel. I don't like commercials. Especially infomercials. Especially ones trying to flog stupid crap products nobody wants, just so they can slap a "As Seen on TV" sticker on the box when it comes on sale at Wal-Mart.

But I didn't, only because I caught a glimpse of what they were selling. It was a grill of some sort. On it the people were making miniature pizzas. Pizza is my favourite food, you see. I love the stuff in almost any form - home made, store bought, frozen, vegetarian, all meat, etc. I love making it myself, too. SO I kept it on to see if I could learn any new techniques in pizza making.

I thought that the voices of one of the people selling the product sounded very familiar. I couldn't quite place it, though, Yet I knew I'd heard the man before. From his hands - all that was showing - I could see that he was of African heritage. Most likely American by birth.

Then  the camera began to pan out.

There, on the Home Shopping Network, was one of my childhood heroes. Mr. T from the A-Team. The meanest, toughest, most badassed dude to ever sport a mohawk hair cut.

There, on the Home Shopping Channel, was Mr. T making miniature pizzas.
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Mr. T (left) and miniature pizzas.


I did an honest double take. Was I dreaming? Had I fallen asleep, worn out from moving my boxes of stuff all day? No.
Was I hallucinating? Had the oat cakes gone bad, and caused this?
Was this some sort of "Special" coffee my mom had left infused with her drug of choice from the 1960's? Nah....Mom's not like that. And the oat cakes were made the day before by Mom, knowing I'd be over.

My brain just couldn't process the weirdness of what my eyes were seeing. I looked again, and sure enough it was indeed Mr. T making miniature pizzas on the Home Shopping Network. Finally deciding that I wasn't hallucinating or dreaming, my brain accepted what it saw. I did the only thing a sane man could possibly have done in that situation

I sat back, enjoyed my coffee, and just took it all in.
 
My life is a freaking surreal moment... no joke. There is one experience in particular, but on here it is definitely TMI. There is one I can relate though...

Sometime last September my girlfriend at the time sends me a text letting me know that she "needs some time." I figured it would be a couple of days or weeks at best. It turns out that was her way of letting me know we were done. When I figured that out I notified her she could come get the things she had left at my house. She never did and I ended up giving/throwing them away. We did get in touch on Halloween, but she said her girls (she has three daughters) were too tired and if we could meet up some other time. I knew it would never happen and just went along with it. Then she said, "You could come by my house since you haven't seen it (she had bought a new home)." "Sure." And left it at that.

I thought little of her in the coming days until Thanksgiving weekend. That Saturday I had the oddest dream. I dreamt that she called me and invited me over to her house, when I arrived I walked into a very spacious living room with high ceilings and for whatever reason there was a dim yellow light. Her kids were there and were happy to see me. After putting the kids to bed we begin to talk and she explains herself... I wake up rather shaken. I hadn't heard from her in about a month, what prompted said dream? I discarded it as me simply not being over it. That was until the very next morning my cellphone wakes me up and as I groggily say hello from the other end I hear her voice, "Good morning!" "Oh! good morning..." "I was wondering if you wanted to come over to my house sometime?" I didn't say anything for a couple of seconds... "um... yeah, that would be great." "Great, I'll call you back when you are actually awake, ha ha, bye." When I did wake up not soon after I couldn't believe it... I calmed myself down by realizing that "sometime" to this woman could be today or it could be next year, so not to get my hopes up, she called later that night.

Around midnight she calls saying she's in the neighborhood and if I didn't mind her picking me up. Of course not. When she picks me up her girls are in the back seat and they are happy to see me, and on the long ride to her house (she lived on the outskirts of town), we made minor chit chat. When we finally arrive and I walk in... oh my god, spacious living room, high ceiling, DIM YELLOW LIGHT... everything except for a few decorations was exactly like I had dreamt it. "What do you think?" she asks with a smile. "Give me a minute because I'm really freaking out right now." She laughs and we proceed to put the kids to bed. And I'll just say the evening transpired with little to no variation from what I had dreamt the day before... I found out the dim yellow light was because she had a knob to control the brightness of every ceiling light in the house, but I must admit, That has topped my list of surreal moments for the last six months. 
 
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