Found Stories

Does this happen to everyone, or what? Nearly every day I run into someone I have never met before, and within five minutes they confess monumental things to me. I am not exaggerating.

Two days ago. Wegmans, Aisle 6. I accidentally dropped my purse and all of its contents flew out at the register. Naturally, I start explaining to the person I was with that I am an absolute klutz and shouldn't be allowed to drive or do anything functional without supervision. A woman behind me immediately shares, "Well, whenever I used to PMS it was like I had Parkinson's for a week!" With an opener like that, I had to turn around. She is a fairly tall woman who looks very strangely similar to the Log Lady but with golden rimmed glasses instead of cherry red ones. She went on to describe her troubles with being a clumsy girl during childhood, which was difficult for her. She was not even picked last for gym class dodge-ball, she just wasn't chosen at all. She hesitated for a moment, lost in the tough moments. Things got better for her though, once she went to middle school. She started swimming, which was fantastic exercise and required no hand eye coordination or balance that would crumble apart with awful clumsiness.

All in about two minutes.

Art class, near the cutting board. I was trying to quickly mat a print for a critique coming up, but since I'm awful with numbers and measuring things... just precision overall, it took me about three attempts to cut a fucking square out of a piece of mat board. Meanwhile, another girl who had missed a few classes was also rushing to complete the same assignment. She had very moon like features, dark curly hair, dark eyes and pale skin on an oval shaped face. Very calm and collected individual. Somehow after 3 years of taking art classes in a very small building with limited courses, we never met before. Between figuring out simple mathematics over pristine white sheets and cursing straight edges, we struck up a conversation. Again, in quite a short amount of time she opened up the floodgates of her past. She described in abbreviated detail the course of her last few years. Her mother's death. Her father's illness. Her strained relationship with her brother, and how it all affected her academic career until she decided to take a year off from school then transfer to Ithaca College. She was so overwhelmed by her emotions that she actually started tearing up.

I can't be the only person who has experienced this. What are your found stories?