Vampireapologist Archive

Today this woman called our information desk and said, “my son’s band is playing tonight. I want to come see him, but he never answers his phone…..I want to be there. Have you heard anything about his band?”

And I felt so bad for this lady but I’m not in the music scene around here so I had to tell her no, sorry.

Five hours later, I’m hiking and run into a group of guys setting up for some outdoor performance, and as I watch them unload the drums it hits me.

“Hey,” I said, “are y’all in a band?”

They said yeah and smiled and I told them “one of your moms called today. She wants to watch you play, but she can’t get a hold of you. Call your mom.”

And they all pulled out their phones and started discussing whose mom it probably was as they presumably dialed their own.

And now, unless we meet again and recognize each other, that’s who I’ll be forever to those guys–some mysterious courier for mom-messages who came out of the woods and told them their mom called.

I didn’t even tell them why their mom called me. Who am I to their mom?? Nobody even asked. They just took my word for it and called their mothers.

… … .

i don’t need em, but…. I’ll take what you have.… 

we were in the middle of nowhere with no cell reception, and the only sign of life was a single, completely dark house across the road from us.

We all did our best to push the car out, and we’re strong people, but we couldn’t make it budge. Cold and stuck, we climbed back and wondered what to do. A car full of men pulled over beside us and asked if we needed help, but getting out of our locked car on a backroad at night with strange men felt like a bad idea, so we said a tow was coming and waved them along. We did that twice before finally deciding our only option was to accept the next offer for help and just risk it,

when a man came out of the house across the street.

He’d clearly been watching us and figured out why we’d been lying to people, which really surprised me & he said “it’s okay, you can stay in your car and keep the doors locked. Just start backing up when I say so.”

I had the window cracked and told him “it’s too stuck. There’s no way we’re getting out. Could you call a tow?”

And he said “just back up when I say so.”

So he walked around the front of the car, squatted, and said “okay back up,”

and I did, and

he lifted

the front of the car Into The Air. Off its front wheels, and we backed up while he essentially wheel-barrowed us back onto the road.

And we were honest to god yelling. We couldn’t help it. We just yelled until all four wheels were back on the ground and he was waving us off while we thanked him.

And then I looked at my sister and cousin & said “he REALLY told us we can KEEP our doors locked as if THAT WOULD’VE FUCKING STOPPED HIM!!!! As if he couldn’t have just RIPPED EM OFF THE HINGES.”

I later looked up the weight of my car, and it’s 3200 pounds without anything or anyone in it.

“Ah! Another like me! We’re few and far between these days, aren’t we?”

And I was like oh man this guy’s sense of humor really aligns with mine! And I laughed and made some other joke about being immortal and thought that was the end of it,

but this man.

He stood by the register for five more minutes. Maybe more. Which let me tell you is an EXCRUTIATING amount of time for something like this to happen.

And he just kept upping the ante!! He starting talking about some REALLY specific details regarding day-to-day life in the 1300s to the point I started getting worried that I’d misled a genuinely immortal being to believe I am also immortal.

He eventually politely left when I got too busy with other customers to awkwardly respond.

So I’d dive in and virtually disappear into the reeds

So we go test some water indices and usually find out that fertilizer runoff from the lawns has turned the pond into an oxygen void, so the fish all essentially suffocated, so we say “you need to build up a riparian buffer [wet habitat vegetation and trees that can absorb nitrates before they get into the water] around your pond”

And they’re like “no that looks ugly” and then they hire undergrads like me to remove the vegetation they do have

And then they’re like “wtf my fish are DEAD again!!!!”