All the Creepy Men

Watch out for provocative joggers!

Sometimes, when I am not busy and I have some free time, I will take a moment to ponder some of life’s greatest mysteries. Why am I here? Are humans alone in the universe? You know, stuff like that. Sometimes my mind settles on one of my more personal great unanswered questions and, while not a deep question, it is an important one. I guess I might as well go ahead and tell you what it is, so here’s the question I ask myself: Why is it, when my mom and I are together, we often seem to be magnets for creepy men?

This question first cropped up when I was in sixth grade, and a creepy boy from my class, Ronnie, used to stare at my mom and me from a tree as we went on our nightly walks through the neighborhood. You can read more about the Ronnie creepiness in my post, My Picker Is BrokenPart I. The weirdness didn’t stop with Ronnie, though. I believe it was the same year, or maybe the next year when my mom and I encountered another creepy man, also when taking our evening walks. I never knew the man’s real name. I just knew him by the moniker with which my mom and I christened him: “The Jogger.”

There we would go, walking down the street past a telephone pole, when the Jogger would run right up. I don’t really remember what his face or hair looked like, and you will see why in a minute. He always wore these short, tight little 1980’s running shorts, and would proceed to begin working those shorts on the telephone pole right in front of our faces. He would stretch his hands up above him on the pole, and put his feet behind him, sticking his butt in the air. It wasn’t that he was attractive or anything, it was just that his stretches were so, well, so provocative! He seemed to have an array of suggestive poses as elaborate as the day is long. And, no matter which direction we went through the neighborhood, we would be subjected to his little stretch parade at least every other day, And not always at the same telephone pole, either! It often seemed like some unbeknownst to us lookouts would inform him that we were approaching, and he would then speed out of his house and begin contorting his body against a telephone pole in our vicinity. And, come on! I was in the sixth or seventh grade, a time when suggestive words or actions feel forbidden and are, at the same time, the height of hilarity. You better believe mom and I snickered as we passed the Jogger, though anyone’s first reaction to him might be to stand there watching him, mouth agape at the pure spectacle of it all.

Wrap your dog as tightly as you
wrap your man-parts!

At the end of my seventh grade year my family took a trip to New Hampshire to visit my grandmother, Grandma Maggy. Of course we drove there, and the trip took approximately 19 and ½ days. Once there, we made a short excursion to Maine, where my mom and I decided to go walking on the beach. It was not warm, probably about 65 degrees outside, and the water was rumored to be a chilly 55. Well, wouldn’t you know it, a man with a thin physique similar to that of the Jogger appeared, running down the beach in a forest green Speedo so tight that it left very little to the imagination. In fact, I don’t know if you have seen Thundershirts for dogs, but the premise is that if a dog is anxious or scared, and he is wrapped tightly around his torso in a Thundershirt, he will feel more secure. Well, if the Thundershirt people could borrow whatever technology it was that was holding that man’s Speedo on, trust me, there would never be another frightened dog in the whole world!

Once again, I don’t remember finding the man particularly attractive, but his lack of clothing was at once, both titillating and hilarious. What’s more is that mom and I couldn’t believe the man’s confidence. I mean, who feels comfortable enough in a tiny Speedo to even walk outside of his bedroom, much less to prance up and down a public beach throwing a Frisbee? And it was chilly outside. Chilly enough that we thought surely this man’s little parade was more a result of him wanting to show himself off than of him actually needing to wear the thing. Plus, his companion who was throwing the Frisbee with him had on shorts and a t-shirt, so it wasn’t as though he had dressed that way just to fit in or something. The Speedo man seemed to have a GPS locator telling him our location, because during the whole walk we could spot him, either right in front of us or out of the corners of our eyes. As you can imagine, a lot of snickering ensued.

Fast-forward about ten years to when I was in college. For some reason my mom and I were downtown, driving through the campus of Georgia State University, where I attended school. I am sure she had gone with me to pick something up, or to turn something in or something. It was drizzling lightly that day, and the overcast sky must have made some of the people walking around on the campus feel a little more protected from prying eyes than on a typical day. Okay, maybe one particular person thought this. Because, as my mom and I were stopped at a red light, this person, a man, obviously, proceeded to unzip his pants and pee all over the side of a building. It was the middle of the day and the man did not appear to be homeless or to have any other visible issues. He just looked like a student. And we saw it all. Every bit of his action was entirely visible to us, unfortunately.

In the same vain, when I was in my mid-twenties I was riding with my mom down a street close to our homes (We live down the street from each other). I am absolutely positive she was driving because I wouldn’t have gotten such a good, detailed look at the creepy man passing by had I been the driver. Once again, it was the middle of the day, and this time it was sunny. As we passed, a man walking down the street appeared to be holding something, perhaps a banana. Well, as we approached, I realized that said banana was actually protruding from the zipper area of his jeans, and that it was not actually a banana at all. And he was just walking down the street holding it like it was a three-bean salad he was just dropping off at a neighbor’s house! The psychic scars are still etched deeply into my consciousness from that one.

Men, do not give this book to a
girl you just started dating!

One thing you should know, before I end this post, is that the creepy man sightings I have described today were independent incidents, and I did not even include the creepy men I have dated! Or the creepy man my mom dated. My mom seems to have had pretty good taste in men back when she was on the market. After all, she married my dad when she was 20, so there wasn’t a whole lot of time for her to mine the dregs of humanity for a date. She did, however, date one strange guy who wanted to give her a birthday gift after they had only been on a few dates. He appeared at her house one afternoon, having ridden the bus there, proffering a gift-wrapped copy of a book about the Boston Strangler. Now, my mom and this guy had never discussed an interest in criminology, or a fondness for mystery stories, or anything like that. Nope. He just thought the tale of a serial killer was an appropriate birthday gift for an 18 year-old girl he had just started dating. Needless to say, there really weren’t any more dates after that. Then my mom met my dad, who, clearly, is awesome, and the rest is history.

I know I have the draw honey does for bees when it comes to creepy men. But clearly, my mom also possesses a little of that magnetism too. So, in the end, we can’t really be sure who is responsible for drawing all of these weird men to us. Thankfully, though, today our ability to do so seems to have waned, and we can now go out in public without fear of being visually assaulted.

Runner photo courtesy of http://www.istockphoto.com

Boston Strangler photo courtesy of http://www.listal.com