Once I was standing at a bus stop in Seattle, along with a number of other people, when a woman walked up to me and asked “Ou est La Bon Marche?” (Bon Marche was a big department store at the time in Seattle.) I pointed in the general direction and said, “La-bas, l’edifice beige.” (“Over there, the beige building.”) Now, how weird is that? This woman asked a perfect stranger on an American street corner a question in French and that stranger happened to be me, who sort of speaks that language. She didn’t even look surprised when I answered.

One time I was scuba diving at night off of Grand Cayman with a group of friends. We were in fairly shallow water (maybe forty feet), kind of down in a canyon, when we heard rumbling and saw lights shining over the ridge. I didn’t think much of it because we were in an area with a fair amount of boat traffic, and I knew we were deep enough to be in no danger from boats zipping by overhead. Then suddenly, a little submarine zoomed over the canyon rim and nearly mowed us down. Yeesh! Who knew you had be on the watch for deadly submarines?

During a spectacular meteor shower, I was standing out my yard at around 3 a.m., simply amazed by the light show going on all around. There were so many meteors that I stopped counting at 100, and they looked like they were falling so close that I kept expecting to hear explosions on impact.  Then I heard a loud snort behind me (ACK!!) and whirled around to see a magnificent buck standing only a few feet away, starlight gleaming off his incredible rack of antlers, his breath steaming in the cold air.

I can never see meteors now without thinking about the “magic buck” I encountered that night.

Those are just a few of the weird and wonderful encounters I’ve experienced in my lifetime. How about you?