Sunday, September 18, 2011

Mondo Weirdo of Public Safety

One of the strangest sleeping stories I have had in my weird experiences file is from one warm night on the Greek isle of Naxos. At 7 p. m. my friend and I were staring at the sea, looking and waiting for a ferry that never did come. Being as we had just said our "fond farewells" to the innkeeper whose damp basement we'd camped out in for a week, we decided to just lay our heads down and sleep where we waited, on the boat dock.

What makes this a Mondo Weirdo experience is what happened when we woke up early the next morning: All around us, in a perfect circle, sat six old Greek fishermen. They were chatting to each other unfazed, as if two blonde 24-year-old American women were not waking up wide-eyed and mortified under their noses.

They were pretty neat-looking characters, and we would have enjoyed seeing them from another vantage point. But at that moment of shame, it was hard to be anything but in a big rush.

My friend and I don't speak Greek, but we interpreted their actions as a statement that we should think twice next time before making our beds in the work space of Greek fishermen.


One night many years ago, when i was young and silly, I drove home after having too much to drink and too little sleep. I decided I had better pull over and sleep before a cop pulled me over and didn't give me an option of where to sleep -- no doubt, it would be in jail.

So I turned off the freeway and into the first residential-looking apartment complex I could find, and I drove along until I found an available parking space, parked the car and dozed off.

The next morning when I woke up, I looked around and realized that I was not in an apartment complex, but a very residential-looking police department!
The cars next to my vehicle were all police cars. It turns out that i had spent the night at the jail after all.

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