The Raven's Roost

questionoftheday asks: Do you have any glitch in the matrix style experiences? Have you ever experienced anything that seemed to break reality?

My answer: Unlike some of my previous skeptical answers on these questions, I don't really have a great explanation for this one. If you're at all familiar with the Jacksonville area, you might know about St. Johns Towne Center, which is a large outdoor shopping complex/mall of a sort. It's spread out, with shops clustering around parking lots, and central to it is an apartment complex/hotel with a roundabout where there's a fountain, koi pond, and the best shops (IMHO) are located - Barnes & Noble, Teavana, California Pizza Kitchen, etc. This is a pretty upscale area. There's an Apple Store, a Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn Kids, Lululemon, all that shit. And it's usually busy.

So one morning Kitty and I went that way to do some shopping. They also have a Target, PetSmart, Staples, and some normalish stores. Since she had her power wheelchair at that point it was best to find a handicapped parking spot that would allow me the space to unload it and all that jazz, so I'd drive around scoping out spots, looking for relatively central location with decent space on either side. We ended up going towards one less-developed end where there were some computer and electronics stores and small cafes - one was a Bento Cafe, a local place that serves good basic Japanese food and sushi. There was no one out here.

I mean literally no one. No cars parked, no people on the sidewalks, no staff members inside the shops. The lights inside were on and in front of the cafes, there were tables outside. A few doors were propped open since it was a nice day. But there were exactly zero human beings around. Kitty and I kind of shrugged at each other and I decided to circle around one more time so we could take a closer look. At the time we assumed we'd gotten there TOO early and everything was technically still closed.

When I pulled around again there were people, cars, everything was normal. There was no way that in 90 seconds all these people had suddenly flooded in, parked, and started walking around. It was absolutely bizarre. To this day I have not come up with a reasonable explanation of what happened. I've been back to St Johns Towne Center many times since then - hey, they have a Barnes & Noble - and I've never had it happen again. The only time I've seen it even remotely that deserted was the morning of the Kilwin's 5k Ice Cream Run, which was held at seven in the morning. But even then there were spectators, and people had come down from the apartments to watch so it wasn't totally empty.

And yes, we got free ice cream at the finish line. ;D