Unrealistic
I think it was the feather boa.

I was waiting in line at Best Buy, going to use a gift certificate that I had to buy some printer ink and a DVD. (And before I get this week's emails telling me what I'm doing wrong, yes, I know there are cheaper, better places to buy printer ink. I had a gift certificate.) The woman in front of me was buying some bit of computer hardware. I couldn't tell exactly what it was -- probably a CD burner. She was wearing leather pants and a feather boa.

In Best Buy.

To buy a CD burner.

Now, if I were going to write a short story about a guy who goes into Best Buy, there would be no woman in a feather boa. If I was a movie director and was staging the scene where a character goes into Best Buy, and one of the extras was a woman in a feather boa, I'd get her off the soundstage. It wouldn't seem realistic. It would look like I was trying to be absurd or vaguely comical for some reason.

But it really happened. Now, it's not like I saw a UFO or Bigfoot or something, or even that it was terribly shocking. That's not my point at all. I didn't see a clown in line in front of me, or a robot. Just an inappropriately dressed woman. It was just, odd. Just... unrealistic.

So it was the feather boa that made me realize that words like "realistic" actually carry very little weight. That reality is actually much more interesting than we give it credit for.

It literally brings a smile to my face when stuff like that happens. When I realize that it's a weird world we live in, I take comfort in that. That's why I read things like News of the Weird and Fortean Times. I like to be reminded, from time to time, that we live in a world where sometimes it rains fish, and sometimes the same person wins the lottery twice, and sometimes lightning takes on the form of a ball and dances about.

This would be a cold, boring place if it was entirely realistic.

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