I seem to have this problem. Although in my own self perception, I think that I look like this-

Apparently, when I leave the house and go downtown, or to any public super market, I look like this in the eyes of every sick ass weirdo with mental deficiencies-

Here is a sample of something that happened to me the other night. So, I go out to get something at the grocery store. I think it was chocolate. Anyway, whatever it was, I am standing in the isle about halfway down and out of the corner of my eye I see someone saunter past, stop, and then turn around. Right then and there, my “approaching nuisance” alarm went off as whoever it is starts closing in on me. After 13 years of being someone who is noticeably identifiable as a freak from most low flying aircraft, I have developed a pretty keen sense of when some sick ass weirdo is about to try and make friends with me.

I thought that I was going to be alright because I left the house wearing my Soviet Navy coat and my Ushanka, as pictured below, but I have discovered that for some really odd reason, completely sober people always assume that I am a Nazi based on the uniform, for some reason, people who are so drunk I would not trust them to be entrusted with the mission of going to the bathroom and not peeing directly into their mouths ALWAYS know exactly what the uniform is. It’s uncanny and I have no clue what is behind this phenomenon, but the drunks always know my uniforms.

Anyway, this guy comes barreling down the isle at me and launches into a huge story about how he used to be in the military, the Navy as a matter of fact. He proceeds to tell me about something that happened to him but I have to confess that he is not holding my entire focus because I am fixated on this huge glob of snot that he is completely unaware is hanging from his nose. It is pulsating, like some mutant egg sack from the movie Aliens, as he breaths. I cannot help it, I am both terribly disgusted, yet oddly transfixed and mesmerized.

Of course, as he is leaving he just HAS to shake my hand. Why is it that the crazier and creepier the person, the more they just LOVE the institution of hand shaking!?

Alright, here it is: just because I LOOK crazy, and you are just plain crazy, doesn’t make us comrades ok? I like my compatriots not to reek like the urine soaked ground of Woodstock, kay?

On a somewhat related topic, I need to know… what would YOU have done in this situation?

I am driving home from work the other day and I pull up to the light. As I do at the light most of the time, I start looking around to see if anything interesting is happening and I notice a woman in the car next to me.

She is probably about 30 something, young, slender, nice business suit on. She has one of those corporate hair cuts that is meant to be both business-like and yet feminine. All in all, she is a pretty clear snapshot of a successful, graceful, corporate woman. My gaze was drawn to this woman in a most unnatural way, to the point where I could not stop watching her with an intense fervor. In a way, when I look back on this brief moment in time, I regard this is one of those situations where I encountered “the one that got away”, but I should probably clarify that this is most likely NOT in the context that you are thinking.

The reason I was staring was not because of this woman’s physical attributes, nor her outward projections, it was in fact because this woman had what seems to be a full 3/4 of her index finger planted firmly in one nostril.

This woman had apparently started off with a casual surveying of the nasal area, probably just your general scouting to make sure nothing is hanging out in direct view, but somewhere along the line she ventured a little farther inside her nose and found that there was more than she bargained for. At some undisclosed point, she had crossed over that threshold wherein she had completely forgotten about her surroundings and had become focused on the all consuming task at hand of excavating whatever nasal obstructions her schnozz contained.

One minute she was a sophisticated business woman, the next minute she is like the mighty nose gold prospectors of yore.

As I am watching the great disappearing act of this woman’s digits, she senses eyes upon her and turns around to find me looking right straight at her.

So what do I do? I am torn between potential responses. The natural one is to look away as quickly as possible and spare this woman further humiliation, and, much like you probably did if you ever walked in on your parents boning, act like nothing happened.

There is also the other mode I am always tempted to go into when I have discovered someone doing something extremely revealing and/or compromising, which is to immediately switch into “Emergency Asshole Override” mode, wherein I do something that draws even more attention to the awkwardness of the situation and makes it much worse for the target.

In this instance I immediately started thinking that the best reaction would have been to have shot back the most horrified look possible, something that conveyed both my utter shock and disgust that women IN FACT DO pick their noses! As if I had spent my whole life laboring under the false assumption that women never picked their noses and that the only purpose of buttholes on the female anatomy was to act as a flower holder, and this WOMAN, this anonymous MONSTER at the stop light had so shattered my perception of the female gender that I was outraged beyond my sensibilities at which point I would open the door, keel forward, and start spewing YooHoo brand chocolate drink directly onto the pavement as final protest against her unbelievable lapse of decorum.

Anyway, I guess I hesitated too long and she turned around and quickly drove away. I feel bad in retrospect because I feel like I really choked at a pinnacle moment and that had my reaction time been more on target I could have…you know, been a real asshole. Sigh…the one that got away.