How about a bottle of 'Poizon'? I'd prefer a bottle of POISON!

I had no weird dreams last night.  Thank goodness, you're thinking to yourself.  I don't have to read about her stupid insane dreams again today.

No, today you get to read about the insane woman who stalked me while I was shopping last night.  If you're on Facebook with me you may have already seen a little about this.

I have a history of attracting crazy people when I'm out minding my own business.  There was the girl at the nail salon who had just been given a real tiger cub as a gift and she was raising it in her apartment down by Ikea who found out her brother had just been arrested for shooting someone and she screamed a big announcement about it.  And this was after she pulled a tupperware container of hot wings out of her purse and ate them while having her nails done and complained about the salon not having bottled water for her because her hot wings were burning her mouth.

Then there was a whole group of people walking around with raw hot dogs hanging out of their mouths trying to talk to me.  And I absolutely HATE hot dogs.

Various people have sung to me on elevators, a lady refused to sell me more than one postage stamp because she said I need to learn to share with others, I had a massage therapist massage the inside of my ears, I had the smurf/surfer salesperson when I bought my dining room table who tried to also sell me weight loss products and insinuated I didn't look like I have good credit and when he found out I do, he tried to sell me a houseful of stuff (after he'd told me I'm fat), I had a random guy run up to me in the grocery store who jumped in front of me, looked me right in the eye and said, "I think you're probably a lot like Wonder Woman" and then walk away, and I could go on and on. 

My friends always say I must make eye contact or lead these people to me in some way and I honest to goodness do not.  Finally, I had a witness to it once.  I was at an art festival just walking around with a couple of friends of mine and one of the exhibiting artists ran up from behind us out of his booth (and no, we had not spoken with him at all) and sought me out of the crowd.  In fact, when my friend heard him running and shouting, "EXCUSE ME!" to people behind us she looked at him and asked if he was talking to her and he pointed at me and said, "No, I need to talk to her."  He then jumped in front of me, pointed at his name badge, and waved his hand under it saying, "You will notice that my name is _______" and then just stood there rapidly nodding his head at me and never said another word about anything.  And my friend said, "Oh.  Wow.  You're right!  You really don't do anything to attract the crazy, do you?  They seek you."

Last night I stopped in Cost Plus World Market after work.  I had only been in the store about 9 seconds when crazy sought me out. I was right in the center of the store where the Halloween and fall decorations/foods were and a woman walked up from behind me (so no, I wasn't making eye contact or trying to engage her in any manner) and she said, "they have absolutely the best Halloween stuff of anywhere! I love this store!"

At that point I just thought she was an extra friendly type of lady so I responded and said, "Yes, they do have a lot of cute stuff in here," and I thought that would be the end of it.  Oh no.  It was only the beginning.

She proceeded to tell me she was only looking and wasn't going to buy anything at all last night, but she just wanted to see what they have this year.  "It's not even October!" she exclaimed.  "I won't buy any of my Halloween stuff until then."

"Okay," I replied.

Then she picked up a bag of chocolates that were wrapped up to look like skulls.  "Aren't these cute?"

"Yes, they are cute."

"Here, why don't I just put these in your basket so you can buy them?" she asked.

"Um, no thank you [crazy person - buy it yourself].  I'm not shopping for Halloween.  I just want to look at their fall decor," I stupidly said.

"Oh!  Here!  Look!  They have pumpkin soup.  Do you want me to put some of it in your basket?"

"No, thank you. [How about I open the jar and pour it over your head?]"

"How about some corn chowder then?  Wouldn't that be good?  Do you want me to put some in your basket to buy?"

"NO!  I am going to just look around for now and see what all they have.  I'm not deciding on anything right now [except that I have decided you are completely insane].  But thanks anyway."

"LOOK AT THIS!  They have pumpkin chai tea!  Do you want some?"

"NO THANK YOU.  I don't like pumpkin flavored foods," I responded [hoping it would make her stop suggesting every pumpkin flavored food in the store].  (I do like pumpkin pie for the record.  But  I abhor pumpkin flavored coffee.  Don't hate.)

I finally managed to meander over to the next aisle and thought I had escaped.

I had not.

She ran over to the aisle I was on carrying two bags of pasta.  "Just look!  Maybe you should get this pasta.  It's in fall shapes like leaves and stuff.  Isn't it cute?  And these are for Halloween and they are shaped like bats and spiders.  Oh, how cute!!"

"Um, no thanks.  Like I said, I'm just looking around right now [so please LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE]."

I finally made it two aisles away when she came up with two bottles of wine.

"Look at this!  It's a wine called Poizon!  I bought some of this last  year for some baskets I put together.  You see, I'm a dog walker.  And I could do Christmas baskets for the families I work for, but that gets too expensive.  So instead I do Halloween baskets.  Isn't that fun?!?!  Halloween is just my favorite holiday!  It's so much fun.  The kids have fun.  The adults have fun.  It's just fun!  There are some families I walk dogs for that I only do baskets for the kids.  But some of them are great customers I've had for a long time so I do baskets for the mom and dad sometimes too.  And last year I did baskets with wine and food.  Now that does get a little expensive.  But it's just so fun!  Do you want me to put this bottle of 'Poizon' in your basket for you?"

"Um, NO!!  I DO NOT!  [But a bottle of real poison might come in handy right now.]  Like I said, I'm only looking for the moment," I replied a little loudly for me.

Before I knew it, here she came again.  This time she came bearing a silver, squirrel-shaped nutcracker.  "Isn't this the cutest?!  Look!  It's a nutcracker and it's shaped like a squirrel!!  This is so clever!  Don't you want this nutcracker?"

"No.  You know, my grandmother had something like that back in the 60s," I responded.

At other various points she tried to interest me in a corn husk turkey, a giant jar of apple juice, a pillow and some coffee mugs.

Finally a salesperson came up to ask her if she needed help finding anything.  I wanted to respond, "No, she's found me 1,000 things she wants me to buy even though I don't know her!"  I also wanted to scream, "RUN!  SHE'LL DRIVE YOU CRAZY!" but I somehow refrained.

Instead, I took that opportunity to hightail it to the other side of the store and hide behind shelves of dishes and glassware until I peeked around after about 10 minutes and she was gone.

I'm a little ashamed to admit that I went back to that section and I bought me some fall shaped pasta and a bottle of Poizon wine.....they are kind of like a souvenir of my weird shopping experience.