Chapter 2, part 9

A funny thing happenned to me…

I’m gunna link you off to the websites of the bands in today’s strip (they are all freaking awesome bands and you should totally buy their music), then I’ve got a story to tell you.
Little Birdy
Architecture in Helsinki
The Grates
Hilltop Hoods

So, uh… this is one of those stories without much of a conclusion or a point to it. But it’s something that happened to me and that makes it real. Gotta love real, right?

It all begins with a pair of thongs. A pair of thongs on a speed bump. Actually, it all begins about thirty minutes before the thongs, around 2:30am,  when I decided I needed pictures for this mornin’s blog. I decided to go for a bike ride and get some photographs of Townsville at the dead of night. I’d finished taking the pics (which you’ll have to wait until later to see) and I stopped for a drink at a vending machine. I’d just gotten a drink when this bloke walked past me.

I turned my bike to ride off and suddenly he seemed to notice me,  and he took off at a sprint. I don’t mean he started to jog, I mean he literally ran full-pelt away from me like I’d shoved a red-hot poker up his arse. It was downright cartoonish, he sprinted away so fast that his thongs flew from his feet as he ran. I watched them hit the ground, then looked up and watched him disappear into the distance.

Strange? Sure. I didn’t get it… why the hell had he bolted? What the fuck?

It was such a strange moment that I took some pictures of the thongs to record it. I’ve posted one above but they came out so blurry that I wasn’t happy with them. So I decided to do an artist’s interpretation of the moment for you.

A little while later another dude approached me, typical Aussie workin’ bloke, and he looked really concerned. He checked me out then asked if I’d seen anyone with a big blue bag which he’d had stolen. I hadn’t, but I did tell him about the kid who’d bolted. Okay, weird.

A bit later I met him again and he’d found a bunch of other people hanging around at the bus stop, but they didn’t have the bag. At this stage I was kinda riding around, trying to put the pieces of this story together. I mean… a dude had bolted from me so fast his thongs had flown off his feet.

I watched them walking around a bit, then later I saw them all talking to the cops, but nothing really came of it all. I have no idea what to think. There’s no way I could have ID’d the guy who ran — and he didn’t have a big blue bag anyway. It’s just one of those perplexing little moments. Trying to piece together the story was vaguely entertaining but it sorta amounted to nothing. No one got arrested and the poor guy didn’t get his bag back.

Life’s kinda like that I guess. Nothing has a proper narrative flow, no matter how much you want it to.

Including this stupid anecdote. Anyway, enjoy the photo of some thongs on the ground.

–Andrew S.
(3:00am is a wonderful, weird, time of night.)