A lizard on his shoulder . . . I am not even kidding

Sometimes you see things in life that you cannot believe. You do a double, triple or quadruple take to try to mentally digest what your eyes are taking in. That happened to me tonight.

I went grocery shopping at an offbeat time to avoid crowds, loud kids, pushy old people, etc. If you have not discovered this strategy, I highly recommend it. If you try to shop directly after work, you will be in the middle of grocery Woodstock. Not good. Anyway, I get in the store and I have my handy list and breeze through my small amount of shopping. Were that it not so, but in this economy, you gotta keep it down to the bare minimum of "what do I absolutely have to have to get by." I get to the checkout and I see this dude come in with something across his shoulder and arm. At first, I thought it was a design on his shirt. Upon closer inspection, I realize it is moving. I look again. It is a motherfucking lizard on his shoulder and I am not even kidding. Dude rolled up in the damn grocery store with a fucking iguana on his shoulder like it was his newborn baby. Like, "No big deal, I rock a lizard all the time, bro." He tells the bag boy that he'd been walking all over town with it on his shoulder and that many people had offered to buy the lizard from him and he refused. Two other men with a host of wannabe gangbanger clothes and tattoos come in and join him. (Think of guys who could be in that Offspring video for "Pretty Fly For a White Guy"-- whiter than white in the suburbs but thinking they are rolling totally gangsta.) One dude runs to the magazine aisle, buys, I shit you not, a book of CROSSWORD PUZZLES. The other dude buys a huge bottle of red Gatorade. The man with the lizard buys nothing. They all leave together. I am standing there dumbfounded, my jaw, to quote The Libertine, decidedly earthbound, in complete shock at what I've just seen. To top it off, I am behind a woman in line who looks and dresses like Bea Arthur's character on The Golden Girls. She is wearing a matching pantsuit in a dusty blue color and I cannot tell if her hair is a wig. She buys a variety of stuff that comes to a total of $80 and pays for it with a personal check. The entire process of her checking out seems to take forever, but the upswing was getting to see the lizard man. On the way home, I got stuck in some Memorial Day Weekend traffic snafu. It wasn't exactly a checkpoint but a cop was out directing traffic at random. Took forever to get worked through a simple 4-way stop and I was hoping everything in the car wouldn't spoil by the time I got to the house.

Earlier this week, I had a crazy encounter in the library. I go in to get various and sundry books on The Saint and I realize I need to pee. I go in the bathroom on the third floor and boom, there's this chick taking a makeshift bath at the sink. Let the games begin. I go in and think to myself that I need to piss and wash my hands as quickly as possible to avoid weirdness. As I am peeing, she starts singing "Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys" and it's all I can do to stifle my laughter. It was so random and weird that I had to giggle. Just had to. I get out of the stall and wash my hands, trying not to make eye contact. The woman spreads pills out on the counter and gets a huge water bottle out of her bag. Again, I am trying to keep an awareness of my surroundings but not make direct contact. She swallows some pills down and says she is taking them for diabetes. I don't say anything. At this point, she screams, "AND I HATE IT!" Although I am now drying my hands and headed for the door, I feel the need to calm her down. So I offer a pithy, "Yes, I can't imagine that it would be much fun to take pills." And she replies, "No, it isn't." On that note, Simon Templar and I escaped unharmed.