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Tutor Zach McLaughlin 's Column

An unusual encounter

Weekly Topic: What was an unusual experience you had with a random person?

Dienstag, 24. August 2021, 01:49

Photo by Filip Mroz on Unsplash

I usually try to avoid random people in Toronto because some of them can be quite strange, but I remember one odd encounter I had while living in a city called Oakville.


I was walking back to my apartment one day, and it was starting to rain heavily. When I got near the building, I saw a woman on the sidewalk in front of the building. She was only wearing a shirt and sandals. No pants. No underpants. She was trying to catch her small dog, but she was having a lot of trouble standing and walking. The whole situation was weird, and I wanted to avoid it, but there was no one else around, and it looked like she needed help.


When I approached her to ask if she needed help, she fell down on the sidewalk and kind of rolled into the street. Her knees hit the asphalt hard and she started bleeding. Obviously, something was really wrong. She told me that she just wanted to go to sleep, so I tried to convince her to get up off the street. She really didn’t want to move, and I didn’t want to touch her, but I tried to help her stand up anyway.


I found out that she lived in the same building as me, so I wanted to get her inside, but she wouldn’t leave without her dog. I tried to catch it, but it kept running away and trying to bite me. Finally, I caught the dog, and the woman seemed to be able to walk again, so we got into the building, and I took her up to her apartment. She seemed to be getting better, and I didn’t want to get involved any further, so I asked if she was OK and then left her apartment. 


After that day, I saw her a few more times walking her dog in front of the building (with pants on!), but she didn’t recognize me at all. I’ll never forget that encounter, though. It was one of the weirdest ones in my life.


This column was published by the author in their personal capacity.
The opinions expressed in this column are the author's own and do not reflect the view of Cafetalk.

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