An odd thing happened recently.

An aquaintace of mine, looked me in the eye and said, "You think of the oddest things." She had apparently been reading some of my recent hubs.

In reality, there is a mind boggling array of odd things I never think about. Ukrainian paleontologists rarely enter my thoughts, I don't give much thought to two headed snakes, tea bag tag collectors, or garden shrubs clipped into the likenesses of famous Italian tenors, all of which are undeniably odd.

In fact, I once started a list of odd things. I lost the list and can't remember what most of the things were, which only proves how little thought I gave them. One may have been soy milk, which is odd because soy is not a mammal.

Telemarketers are odd, believing as they must, that people who mute TV commercials would gladly get up from dinner, answer the phone and listen to a five minute pitch for a product they don't need or want.

There are scores of other odd callings, like: deodorant tester, worm rancher, falconer, political speech writer, and professional apologizer. I don't know if countries other than China have professional apologizers, but over there people hire them to smooth things over with individuals they may have offended.

Odd.

Perfumes named after numerals like 4711 Cologne, or Chanel No. 5, or named after moral failings and mental disorders like My Sin, Forbidden Desire, Infatuation, Obsession, and Paranoia are odd. Beauty salons, I believe, are legally required to have odd names like Curl Up and Dye, or The Clip Joint. (... and I'm almost afraid to admit that there really is no perfume named Paranoia.)

Having a reptile or amphibian, such as a saber toothed snapping turtle, as a pet is odd.

Limericks are odd.

Creating full size models of anything from toothpicks is odd. Electric fly swatters are odd. Garden gnomes are odd,as well.

Small Welsh villages whose names have fifty letters or more are odd. How to they fill out sweepstakes coupons and subscription forms in those towns? How long are their envelopes?

Certain ethnic and gourmet foods can be odd. For instance escargot and poi, especially when served together, are odd.Baba Ghanoush is odd because it sounds like something which has been stepped on while it was still alive. Pasta made in the shape of tiny wagon wheels or stand-up comics is odd.

Using the correct form of the verb "to be" after a prepositional phrase in that last sentence sounds odd.

I find it odd that "diaper" spelled backwards is "repaid".

I hope no one misunderstands. I have nothing against odd things. Certainly paleontologists and apologizers of any race, religion and nationality should have the right to make an honest living. And that goes for garden gnomes as well.

Every generation of teenagers has gone to great lengths to be more odd than the previous one with odd fashions, odd music, odd dances, odd verbal expressions, and odd behaviors which, in time, begin to seem normal and therefore no longer odd.

There are a few odd things to which I have given brief consideration before dismissing them as totally unanswerable mysteries. One of them is how a household of four persons can generate 12 loads of laundry in two days.

Another is why everyone in my family likes a different kind of salad dressing, except when we go to a restaurant together where everyone orders the same kind.

I have found it is useless to try to change such oddities. I once decided that I would solve the dressing dilemma by buying the restaurant's own brand and then creating a restaurant ambiance at home.

I put a flickering candle in a colored glass jar covered by a mesh onion bag. I used cloth napkins and carefully spattered water spots on the glasses and eating utensils, just like the restaurant does. Nobody liked the dressing that night, though they may have been put off by the smell of the burning onion bag.

It did smell a little odd.