you stole this from David Lynch, right?

Where was Bob Dylan in all of this?

A little oompah band sat on my counterpane and played Edelweiss.

Most likely not the point of the thread, but this story is totally true, and completely unbelievable, and I love telling it.

Context: my father had two sons from his first marriage who I lost touch with when he and my mom got divorced and he basically disappeared, about fifteen years ago.

My grandfather passed on last February. I was at the wake with my family and, as is common at wakes for 80 year olds, everyone there was either a family member or a friend of the family.
In walks a 30ish guy I'd never met. He goes up to the minister (my grandparents didn't attend the same church), talks for a bit, and the minister takes him over to introduce him to my grandmother, mom, and uncles.
One of my uncles looks at him for about thirty seconds, holds up his hand, and says "I know who you are, Adrian."
I'm semi-watching this from the other side of the room, but it really got my attention when I saw my mother jump to her feet and shriek.

It turns out that this guy was my half-brother who I hadn't seen in a decade and a half. He had met my grandfather at church and been going to brunch with him regularly. He never knew my mother's maiden name, so he never connected that the older fellow from church he enjoyed spending time with was the same man who had sat with him at countless Sunday dinners years earlier.

That is, by far, the strangest experience of my life.

And, because the cosmos hates me, I lost his number when I left my husband, it's unlisted, and I have no way to get in touch with him now.

Cool story, kelly. Any internet P.I. service can track down Adrian's number for you. Screw the cosmos.

I once had an avocado fall on my head while I was naked.

My strangest experience happened just the other day when I was on the front page of wikipedia. There was an image in the "recently featured articles" section, and I guess it was supposed to be the Canadian flag (that's what showed up when I clicked on it) but the image there appeared to be a shot of a naked man's crotch, while he held his man member, and he was covered in some brown stuff. It was kind of gross, and I had no idea what was going on, but it turned back into a Canadian flag when I reloaded.

do i have to pick EVER? because finding out about r kelly without having to pay attention to him was like some stolen delight.

*trying to figure being the "attacked by turkey vultures" story or "that i got hit on by danny bonaducci in from of thom yorke"*

Did Thom Yorke hit on you then, too?

oh no, i believe i scared the crap out of him
let's not get into it
i just apologize all around
it was a weird night
the turkey vultures are far more amusing
althought one of my bus collision stories may be weirder all around

This just happened in the last month or so.

For convenience's sake, let's just call the father of my son my ex-husband. He has a new partner, of about three years now, and they are tremendously happy; so far so good. About 18 years ago, his wife's daughter, aged about 15 or 16, got pregnant, and gave up the baby for adoption (over her mother's ferocious objections, but that's another story). Fast forward 18 years; the baby, a girl, and now a legal adult, decided to sign up for the goverment registry so that she can contact her biological family. In quick order she is in touch with her bio mom, and also her biological grandmother. They arrange to meet at the medium sized city where the bio mom now lives. Bio mom is also, this weekend, just to make things interesting, graduating from nursing school and marrying her girlfriend in what might be the biggest same-sex wedding yet held there.

Grandmother gets there with my ex-husband. Meeting with long-lost granddaughter takes place. During the conversation, it emerges that the long lost granddaughter moved with her family to a very small town in the BC Interior when she was young. This town, with a population of only a few thousand (if that), was also at the time the home of my brother, sister in law, and three nieces. Long lost granddaughter and my oldest niece then become, and have remained, best friends. They are such good friends that we in fact already know the long lost granddaughter on this side of the family, well enough that she came on holiday with us in 1999. She knows me, my brother, my wayward sister in law, obviously all my nieces, and my son, who, it now works out, is her step-uncle.

So that's the oddest thing that's happened around here for a while.

oh no, i believe i scared the crap out of him

Danny or Thom? :D

well that's almost like those r kelly videos, and i actually looked at best week ever for the first time to find a context for that joke without exposing anyone to actual bad r&b.

tangentally: it all makes me think of this comedy duo who's bit i've seen on bill maher and such who do a r&b parody where the chorus is:

Someone's fucking your lady
somebody's fucking your girl

The summer I was 17, I was visiting my grandparents in Portland, Oregon. One afternoon, there was a knock at the door, and upon answering it, was surprised to see I recognized the person at the door. She was a French girl whom I had met the previous summer in a meditation ashram in upstate New York, where I had been living for the past three years. By some amazingly weird coincidence, she was in Portland, going door-to-door selling greeting cards for an environmentalist's fund raiser, and just happened to knock on my grandparent's door when I was there. Very surreal.

This is weirder, and completely true: when I was 12 and visiting friends in a small town in northern California, I went to a variety show put on at the local high school. There were all sorts of acts, but my favorite was the juggler. After the show, I found him to tell him how much I'd enjoyed his work, and I found myself (completely out of the blue) asking if he knew a woman named Lily S. "Oh, wait," I said, "you would have known her by her maiden name, Lily B." He thought for a minute and said "Well, yeah! She was my Spanish teacher at UMass!" I said "Oh, that's cool. She's my mom." He was dumbfounded. "You're the bump?! How did you know who I was?"

I hadn't. I'd never met the guy, never seen him before, and my mom sure hadn't mentioned him to me, he was a student and acquaintance of hers when she was pregnant with me.