Intruder Alert, by Whit (SF, CA)
(type: bizarre ... a first person account)
Ed: Yeah, I know, things have stagnated on this site, but I still maintain hope that somewhere down the road it will pick up speed. I couldn't let this fairly recent event go unpublished, it's just too weird.
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I've been an avid snowboarder for several years now, and more often than not, my trips to Lake Tahoe (three hours away) are day trips. I had embarked on one such trip this past winter when a singularly bizarre and initially frightening event shook up my morning.
It was about 6 AM, and I had just stopped my car in front of my friend Melissa's apartment, a relatively clean residential area right outside of Haight-Ashbury, to pick her up. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed her number, then realized that someone was reaching for the passenger door handle. Initially I assumed it was her, but... it wasn't. It was a dude. And he had sat down in my car and closed the door. He looked at me with a smile and said, "hey." I looked at him with a blank stare and said "hey" back. Then Melissa answered her phone.
"Hey, Whit," she said.
"Hey," I said timidly. "I'm... here."
"Okay, I'll be out in a second," she replied, and hung up.
I turned the phone off and looked at the dude, who was just sitting there. He didn't necessarily look like a homeless person - maybe a little on the scraggly side, but certainly not a degenerate. I had initially assumed I was being car-jacked, but I didn't see a gun or knife in his hands. So I looked at him and said, "What are you doing?"
He looked at me with mild surprise and said, "I thought you were picking me up."
A bewildered, incredulous look swept over my face as I said, "no!"
"Oh!" he replied. "I'm sorry, sorry," he said as he climbed back out of the car. As he was doing so he noticed my snowboard in the back seat. "Oh, you're going snowboarding!" he said.
Me, still incredulous: "Yeah."
Him, still oblivious: "Okay, bye." And he was gone.
I can sum up my feelings on this event with three words, and I can assure you that I have never been more sincere in using them: what the fuck? To this day I cannot fathom why anyone, hitchhiker, hooker or otherwise, would be so sure of a driver's intentions that they would get into a stranger's car in a nice neighborhood without at least checking to make sure that's what the driver had in mind. It will forever remain the stupidest and most concise unsolved mystery of my life.