Occasionally, An Odd Duck Crosses My Path

Today I encountered a person of an extremely esoteric character.

I have encountered a number of extremely esoteric characters over the years, and have found that the single best, least rudest way to describe them is as an "odd duck".

"Uniquely tweaky deaky freaky" would be another.

The one I met today got me thinking about some of the others. I have met so many odd ducks that I started to classify them some time ago. 

Here, for your consideration, are brief biographical sketches of five odd ducks I have met or encountered, from five of the classifications I have come up with for them (names and other obvious identifiers of these people have been omitted or changed due to...lawyers).

1) The oddest duck out of water I have ever known was a man who dreamed of being a professional dancer though he did not come anywhere near to the typical physical profile of a professional dancer. He was roughly 6'5" tall and weighed at least 350 pounds, if not more. 

A 100% muscle-free 350 pounds.   

I met him when I was in my early 30's. He was in his mid 50's. For most of his life he had worked in the family business - his parents owned a motel with a bar & grill attached, and at the time I met him his parents were for the most part retired, so he and his wife pretty much did everything to keep the motel and bar & grill running.

His wife, BTW, was a bit of an odd duck, too. She loved to sing Karaoke, and was actually pretty good, but she also liked to look the part of a Las Vegas lounge singer, so she always wore sparkly spangly sequined dresses. 

Always.

Just about every night of the week they could be found in the lounge area of the bar & grill, she singing a WWII era torch song, he dancing with one of the regular customers, or one of their two daughters, or by himself - he really didn't care if he had a dance partner, he just loved to dance.

Oh, and he drove a 1974 Datsun B210. He absolutely loved that car and took immaculate care of it. 

Those are very small cars - seeing his huge frame behind the wheel of that small car was like watching a whale swimming in a kiddie pool.

2) The oddest duck stuck in a different era I ever knew was a much older woman I met when I was 20. I never knew her exact age, but it was somewhere between 40 and 50. She worked in sales at a JC Penny's, and she walked, talked and dressed as if she was a 1950's pin-up queen. 

She seemed to have an infinite supply of outfits from the 1950's, and each and everyone of them appeared to be designed to reveal her very ample curves - and she wasn't adverse to letting a button or two pop off her blouse every once in awhile.

I do not believe I ever saw her without seeing a lot of her cleavage and even more of her legs.

Engaging in a conversation with her could be either a challenge or hilarious, as she had a way of giggling as she talked, and used a lot of 1950's slang. 

She used to call me her large charge, which was a nice boost to the old ego.

I didn't know it at the time, but that was my first encounter with what has come to be known as a Cougar.

3) The most talented odd duck I have encountered (this is the largest category of odd ducks, btw) was a man I met when I was in my mid-20's. This guy could play piano like he was born to it, and he painted like an Renaissance master. 

But he lived in a shack that was filled to the rafters with old books and magazines, most of which he said he had never read - he told me he just liked the smell of the old paper.

He also kept his hair closely cropped on the left, while I don't believe he ever cut the hair that hung long and limp on the right side of his head.

His parents were wealthy - his Dad was a television executive in L.A. (I forgot who for) and his Mom was an actress who had been on a few television shows in the sixties. 

He was the first man I ever knew who painted his fingernails.

4) The luckiest odd duck I've ever known was a man I met in the late 1990's, just after I returned to the states. He was in his early 40's, lived with a very attractive woman that everyone who knew him swore had to be just a roommate, and rode a classic Schwinn ten-speed bike to work throughout the spring and summer, but drove an old, beat up Buick Riviera in the fall and winter months. 

This man was always telling stories about various adventures he'd been on, or about stuff that he'd invented that was stolen from him, and he also claimed to have won the lottery.

This went on for years without a shred of proof ever offered, and then one day he kinda just disappeared from the face of the Earth. 

About a year after he had simply vanished I ran into him at the airport in Albuquerque, New Mexico, of all places - he was waiting to board a flight to L.A. 

He was very congenial when I walked up to him and said "long time no see, where have you been", and then he introduced me to this very beautiful woman sitting next to him - stating she was his wife. 

Told me that they had been traveling around the world on a sort of long-delayed Honeymoon,which they were at that point smack dab in the middle of, and that's why no one had seen him in a year. 

She verified this, adding that they had won a sizable sum playing the lottery with a ticket they had purchased together ten years ago, and that they had decided to give their relationship a test of time and poverty before spending the money on anything together. 

I didn't ask how much they had won, but I figured that since they were on a vacation without a foreseeable end (which, btw, they had to interrupt to attend the wedding of her sister in Albuquerque), it must have been a sizable sum indeed.

Never saw either of them again after that chance meeting - gave them my address and asked them to drop me the occasional postcard, but never got one.

5) The unluckiest odd duck I ever knew was a woman that I worked with about 20 years ago who I believed had to be possessed by a poltergeist.

She was kookie to begin with, but then, as I got to know her, I began to realize that she was not only kookie, but also just plain unfortunate.

She was not without coordination or grace, but I swear I never once saw this girl without her telling me of something bad that had befallen her. 

It was never terribly bad stuff, but it was bad none-the-less. 

Things like ink pens exploding in her shirt pockets - she wore white blouses with pockets and despite having a history of pens exploding in them, kept wearing white blouses with pockets and kept putting pens in them. 

She also had the heels of her shoes breaking off just about constantly - and insistently kept wearing shoes with high heels despite having fallen quite a few times due to heels breaking off.

And her car seem to get hit a lot by other cars - when it was parked, never when she was in it, thankfully.

About once every three months she would tell a new story of her car being parked somewhere - at work, in front of stores, malls, etc., and getting backed into or sideswiped.

She once told me that she had two different cars get hit by two different garbage trucks, in the same post office parking lot, within the span of a few months.

Haven't seen that women in over a decade - wonder how she's holding up?