I live somewhere sunny in the USA, and a woman stops and stares at me in absolute disbelief. She says, “ericxjo??? Is that you???”. At this point I’m very confused because my name is neither common nor rare, but she clearly knew me and my name. I totally forgot, as far as I knew, who this was. Must have been someone who knew me very well, the way she was looking at me. “I thought you were in Australia!!” (at that point in my life, I had never been to Australia). So I said, “um, no, I’m here…” and we start to talk and she sits down. I’m a bit worried about her so I sit down too, she looks, well… concerned and shocked. After a little while, she finally realizes that she doesn’t know me after all. It turns out that she mistook me for her SON, who lives in Australia. She showed me pictures of him. Might as well have been me. There was no difference at all, it was like I was looking at a picture of myself. I joked that we should call him (I was seriously wondering if he sounded like me). His mother also mentioned that we had the exact same mannerisms and walking style. She also admitted at first she thought I was her son putting on a fake accent…

So I’ve never met my doppelgänger, but I met his mom!

I was walking down the sidewalk, and I was coming up behind another fellow who was walking slowly. When I was just a few feet behind him, I must have stepped on a stick or a leaf or something, and it made a cracking sound. The guy turns around facing me and shouts “YOU DIDN’T BREAK THEM EGGS, DID YA?” Surprised, and having never encountered an actual crazy person before, I simply informed him that I did not, in fact, break the eggs.

At this point, he begins walking alongside me, and talking about some stuff that doesn’t really make any sense to me. I try to be polite and chat a bit, but I’m really just hoping for him to leave me alone.

He finally says “I want to give you this”, and he hands me what appeared to be a blue glass object, about the size of a small stone. He proceeds to tell me that if I have this object, the ladies won’t be able to resist me. He continues “now let me show you how to use it. First of all, you gotta keep it in a safe place”, and then he proceeds to pull another of these objects OUT OF HIS MOUTH.

I thanked him for his kindness and hurried on my way, just wondering if there was anywhere nearby that I might be able to wash my hands. After I put some distance between us, I looked back at him, just in time to see him turn towards another person, and I could faintly hear: “YOU DIDN’T BREAK THEM EGGS, DID YA?”

I have a shocking number of these stories. I’m a very friendly-looking, non-threatening person so I guess people just feel comfortable talking to me about any old thing.

One time I was walking round town and made eye contact/smiled at a woman walking the other way to me (small village habits-hard to break) and she suddenly started talking about the weather to me, so I awkwardly stopped and made some non-comittal response. She mentioned she’d sat on a bench after it had rained and motioned to her arse and asked me if I thought she’d get a cold.

I was like “I don’t think it works that way…” and then she asked me to TOUCH HER ARSE to confirm it wasn’t wet. For some reason my response wasn’t “Umm, wtf, no I’m not touching you…” but just repeatedly confirming that it didn’t look that wet and I was sure she’d be fine because she wouldn’t stop asking.

Eventually I managed to get out of that situation without fondling a complete stranger, but I will forever remember that day.

I was going to work, waiting at the bus stop. This guy walks up to me and says some super racist shit like “awful lot of slur round here, huh?” I gave him a weird look and he goes “oh, sorry, are you not a skinhead?” I told him I wasn’t and he apologized and walked away. That’s when I realized my clunky steeltoe work boots and shaved head really did make me look like a skinhead…

Picked up a hitchhiker pushing a baby stroller in the middle of the night. He had somehow walked nearly 15 miles from the nearest town, and had at least another 10 to go to the next one.

He gets in the car and he’s clearly homeless and drunk as fuck, but I honestly thought he was gonna die out there on the highway, so I decided to drop him off in the next town despite the possible drama. He was full of wild tales, and would start and stop them with no context whatsoever. The one I remember was when we had been driving quietly for a bit and he suddenly intoned in a mournful voice:

“My mother was Cherokee. She died in the snow.”

Immediately followed up by “you gotta cigarette?”

Hung around at the bar after small concert, my wife and I started talking about the show with a woman next to us. Then the front-man of the band walks up and we all talk but he and the woman are flirting heavily. Turns into us walking out to go grab a drink at another bar, not that it was sketchy or anything but she indicates she won’t go without her new friends (us). Except we couldn’t really find a bar, it was some generic family restaurant that served beer so we’re sitting across from each other with our beers and the singer and the lady are whispering and making out with each other. It was not make-out vibes in this family restaurant, and they weren’t even that drunk, but whatever. Pretty weird night.

Pretty tame, but it’s the one that came to mind first. Walking down the high street, and there’s a dude in the middle of the path handing out leaflets or something. Obviously, he spoke to everyone who walked by, me included, but he had a deep, smooth voice like melted chocolate running across your fingers, and it just made the whole thing surreal to me.

Him: Mmmyssstery maaaan?
Me: I’m good, thanks.
Him: Goodbyyyyye~

I kept walking for a few steps before I just curled over laughing.

I once worked at a gas station in a European country. A tourist once complained to me that it was really hard to find their way around town because none of the street signs were in English. I had to take a moment to gauge if they were joking or not. I explained that they are of course written in the local language and they said that wasn’t really considerate of us since we knew that there might one day be tourists here. I choose to believe they were just messing with me because I refuse to believe that anyone can be that dumb.

I was confused for Chris Rock.

Probably the time I got cottaged while trying to take a crap in the toilets under the local library.

Long story short, a guy stuck his head under the cubicle. I was shocked for a couple of secs, asked him wtf he thought he was doing, he said “Oh sorry, I thought you were someone else” then retracted his head back from whence it came.

Not sure if creepy or flirty, but once when nursing my too many-th beer for the night at my local, a lady walked up, stroked my face and said “you’re so cute and alone” then disappeared into the strobe-lit night.

I had a guy tell me he has hemorrhoids while we were pumping gas at adjacent pumps. Nothing before, nothing after. He just said “hey man, I have the worst hemorrhoids”. I wasn’t in uniform or on duty (medic) and he didn’t ask for advice or ask say anything else. It was like an observation about the weather. Middle-age guy, nornal car, nonspecific clothes, and no other oddities. I thought maybe he was on a Bluetooth phone, but no, he was telling me. I just said “that sucks”, he nodded and we continued fueling our cars in silence.

I once had a man very high on drugs try to sell me his shirt on the bus before calling me several slurs when I turned him down.

When I was drunk once I nearly got into a fight with a marine who was probably twice my size because he was trying to kick pigeons for fun

Not really weird or anything, just amazing.

I was in an elevator in Los Angeles. I lived in Indiana at the time and was visiting my brother in LA. This was in the 70’s.

A guy got on after me, he said “Hi” and that’s it. Something about him made me interested, I asked where he was from. he said "Indiana. I asked what town and he answered the same town I was from. We compared notes and did not go to high school together, didn’t work at any of the same places, were not related to anyone and seemingly had nothing in common. We did not recognize each other from anywhere. He admitted he had the same interesting feeling when he spotted me. He said he was visiting family and had been there only a few days, I had been there a few weeks, so no travelling together.

We shook hands and parted ways. We never saw each other again since then.

Few years ago I was living in a building that was going to be teared down. They had set up these huge dumbsters on the yard for the residents to throw out all their furniture they don’t need anymore. We had broke my roommates couch and I was just carrying pieces of it to the dumbster when my neighbour stopped me and told me not to throw them in the dumbster but instead leave them next to it so he could play with his children on them. The guy was seriously taking dirty mattresses and broken down furniture from dumbster and playing on them with kids.

Then he invited me to his 50th birthdayparty that was also going to be some kind of goodbye party for the building apartment and everyone was invited and he told how he would have free booze and weed for everyone and how he would make a huge amount of food and vegan options also.

In the middle of his invitation to the party he just casually took my necklace to his hand because it was hidden partly under my t-shirt, looked at it and just continued to talk about the party without saying a word about my necklace, which I assume was a positive thing because I had anarchist symbol as a necklace and some people get really pissed about it lol.

His party did sound pretty good because I’m a pothead and also vegan but I didn’t go lol. It was quite weird interaction in finnish standards because normally people arent that trashy here :D

Not the weirdest but first to come on my mind