Weird Nights Make The Best Stories: Keep Santa Cruz Weird

The other night I was hanging out with my friends Zeki and Seqouia (funky names, right?), and together us three were having a completely normal evening. We were playing music, singing, chatting about various things but suddenly Zeki began to look disgruntled. He interjected, "What do you really want to be doing right now? I can't stand being with people who aren't doing what they want."

Sequoia and I turned toward each other in utter confusion. "But, we are having a good time," Seqouia said meekly.

"Sure, maybe you are, but you'd rather be doing something else," countered Zeki.

So we all threw out some fantastical ideas: going to Germany, swimming with sharks, etc. But Zeki was serious, we were going to do something crazy, he was set on it.

He glanced at the floor and spotted this strange looking anime fanny pack — exactly the inspiration he needed. He then stood up, grabbed the fanny pack, fastened it around his waist in a really ill-fitting manner, and put his hair in a pony tail that resembled a pompom. "We're going to deliver messages," he declared.

Seqouia was skeptical. This was her first time hanging out with Zeki, and he's definitely a little wackier than her regular friends. "Who is this guy?" she whispered to me. "Just go with it," I relied.

So we began writing messages, whatever we interpreted a message to be. One of mine was, "Tiny purple pineapples with eyes." One of Seqouia's was just a drawing of a shark. Zeki was secretive about his. Once we came up with about 15, he put them in the fanny pack and off we went. Door-to-door Zeki would go — knocking, handing over the message and then standing there completely silent for however long it took until the person shut the door. Seqouia and I were standing way off to the side due to uncontrollable giggles and sheer embarrassment. The reactions of the people were priceless. Some interpreted them as riddles they had to decipher, some thought they were messages someone else had told Zeki to deliver, and some didn't care at all.

As we ran out of messages Zeki began to explain his mission, "I just want to inspire people to be weirder. Hopefully one of those people found this charade memorable, and maybe were inspired to do it themselves. That would be great. Everyone should feel comfortable acting like a weirdo sometimes."

Seqouia and I understood. Though it was a bit awkward at first, the whole activity was really fun and definitely something I won't forget.

Then, Zeki unrolled the last message in the pack: "Isn't this all a bit strange?"

"This one's definitely for us," he smiled.