Freempf

Have you ever had a mundane experience where you thought, "Huh, That is the first time this particular event has ever happened to me" and feel like it seems super weird that whatever the thing was has never happened to you before that moment?  

For example: one time I looked down at my feet while I was walking and I saw my shoe come untied. I literally saw the exact moment it happened.

You may be thinking to yourself what a stupid example that is, but consider, have you ever seen the exact moment your shoe comes untied? Like, the EXACT moment it happens? Its not like you go around staring at your shoes all the time in the off chance your laces are about to do something slightly more interesting than hold your sketchers on your foot.  I bet its it's only like, 40 people in North America. My 39 associates and I should start a gang. With Jackets. Or top hats. And jet packs.

Not so smug about my example now, are you? My top hat-jetpack gang turn our noses up at you. But I digress.

Believe it or not, I was going somewhere with this and it had nothing to do with shoelaces. That was just a happy little detour down wishful thinking lane we all just took together.

Where I was going with this was that on more than one occasion I've had the distinct feeling that I'm experiencing something completely run of the mill for the first time ever. Furthermore, after that first occurrence it's as if some cosmic switch was flipped and that weird random thing happens like, twelve times in a row. 

This whole idea kind of seems like one of those hyper-specific feelings that should have its own suspiciously made up sounding term. If you don't know what I'm talking about google "words for really specific feelings" or something similar. Buzzfeed is sure to have at least one list of them that you "won't believe".

It would be like Schadenfreude for pointless life occurrences. The Germans have words for everything, right? Someone call the Germans and tell them to get cracking on this one. Something like Fraufingazen or, Blintzengruben, or Freempf.

I had a pretty Freempfy week this week.

I had a stranger stop me in a parking lot and ask me to help jump his car on Monday. Nothing weird about that in and of itself, but it did occur to me that I've never had a stranger ask me to jump start their car before.

Full disclosure, I may have had a moment where I tried to figure out how a stranger asking me for a jump in the crowded parking lot of a Shop-Rite could potentially be a trick to rob and/or serial murder me, but it all turned out fine. All said and done I felt good about helping somebody, I got the pasta sauce and craisins I had been dispatched to retrieve and there was 0% robbing or murdering.

The weird part is that after having my first experience jump starting a stranger's car, it happened twice more over the next three days.

I went from a 26-year streak of never having had a stranger ask for a jump to having it happen three times in a week. Granted, a good chunk of those 26 years doesn't count, as at no point in my early life did I ever find myself in a hilarious driving-baby type situation. 

The ability of babies to work jumper cables aside, it seems super weird to me that this week was the the first time it's happened and then it happened three times in a row. The first two times it happened, the person who needed a jump had cables in their vehicle.  The third time, which was in the parking lot of Wal Mart, the couple asked if I had the cables, which I did not. 

After telling them I couldn't help them and going into the store, the combination of feeling bad that they were stuck and super weird about the fact that I kept having people ask me for a jump prompted me to purchase a set of jumper cables with the intention of catching them on my way out and giving them a hand. Much like in the story of how I ended up with a box of pulled pork and an avocado, this plan also backfired. 

When I came out of the store, the people who had needed a jump were no longer at their car. The spot in front of them was open, so I moved my vehicle into place so that If they came back I could give them the jump. They didn't reappear though. I figured I'd wait a few minutes, thinking maybe they went in to buy jumper cables themselves and I'd just help them when they came back out.  

After about five minutes, when they didn't return I got super uncomfortable that it would seem really weird that I had purchased a set of jumper cables and then just sat in the parking lot near their car for them.

At eight minutes, paranoid of seeming like a complete creep, I bailed. 

And now I own some jumper cables:

At least it seems purchasing the cables was what it took to break the cycle of Freempf. I haven't been asked to jump anyone's car since getting them.

Moral of the story. Sometimes weird stuff happens. And Jetpack Tophat Gang is awesome.