I was about 13 at the time and on a family vacation. My parents were in a store shopping and I was bored so I went to stand outside. I’m standing out there and this very old, very fat, very short man (he looked a lot like Danny devito) walks up to me and says “Aren’t you just the cutest.” He then pinches my cheek and walks away. I’ll never forget him.

I was working at a grocery store, stocking food in the freezer aisle. Along comes a customer, passing by on the other side of the waist-level coolers that divide the aisle in half. She’s unremarkable: middle-aged, white, obese. Indistinguishable from the thousands of other customers I saw in my years there.

So this woman passes me, just looking at the frozen foods. And there, hanging on the back of her shirt, is a lizard. And not just a common garden-variety lizard, but a bearded dragon.

A live adult bearded dragon is just chilling on the back of this customer’s shirt as she does her grocery shopping.

Just. What.

I had so many questions. But I was a socially awkward teenager so I said nothing and never saw the lizard lady again.