Date: Friday, December 4, 2009
Time: 9:00 AM approx.
Place: Orange Coast College Recycling Center, Costa Mesa, Calif.
Incident Report:
A white Dodge Ram pickup parks. A burly man steps out. He is Caucasian, in his late 30s, bearded, wearing a baseball cap, athletic team t-shirt, and shorts. He brings out two large Dell Computer boxes.
An attendant takes the boxes from the man, notices Styrofoam blocks inside, and takes the blocks out. He returns them to the man, saying, “We don’t recycle Styrofoam.”
Paranormal Incident #1: The burly man, in an agitated state, shouts, “HOW ABOUT I LEAVE MY PHONE NUMBER AND IF YOUR SUPERVISOR HAS A PROBLEM, HE CAN CALL ME.”
The attendant says something inaudible. It does not appear to sit well with the burly man, who kicks the boxes aside, throws the Styrofoam into the back of his pickup, and shouts again…
Paranormal Incident #2: “I SPEND THOUSANDS OF FUCKING DOLLARS HERE.”
Analysis:
Three key events stand out in the narrative:
1) A recycling center attendant refuses to accept pieces of Styrofoam.
2) The man who brought the cardboard boxes containing the Styrofoam offers the attendant his phone number.
3) Faced with the attendant’s continued refusal to take his Styrofoam, the man protests that he has spent “thousands of dollars” at the recycling center.
Event #1 is perhaps puzzling but can be explained within the bounds of known logic and science. Events #2 and #3 represent substantive departures from reality as we understand it.
Theories
a) The man, suffering from a recent head injury, has confused his surroundings, thinking he is still at the Dell Computer store and arguing over a matter of commerce with a sales associate.
b) The man and the attendant, representing foreign governments or domestic security services in a covert capacity, are engaged in an elaborate code language rendered indecipherable to passersby.
c) For a brief moment on the morning of Friday December 4, 2009, the Orange Coast College Recycling Center hosted a breach in the time-space continuum between the known world and an alternate universe, where offering a phone number results in someone accepting your trash, and it is possible to spend significant amounts of money at a place of waste disposal.