When President Obama went airborne on Sunday in the arms of Florida pizza-parlor owner Scott Van Duzer, it surely set a record for the most bizarre interaction that he has had with a citizen on the campaign trail. But it was far from the only one. Let’s relive five other unusual incidents, shall we?
The Chinese Restaurant Ass-Grab Free-for-All
During a February visit to Great Eastern Restaurant in San Francisco’s Chinatown, President Obama’s butt was caressed by not one but two separate old Chinese ladies. According to the Huffington Post, “The surprised president simply smiled and laughed.” Because that’s pretty much all you can do in that situation.
“Hottie With a Smokin’ Little Body”
What drove 45-year-old single mom Luann Haley to approach President Obama — the president of the United States! — at a wing restaurant in Buffalo in May of 2010 and tell him that he’s a “hottie with a smokin’ little body”? “Ha ha ha, I don’t know,” she told a local news station the next day. Fair enough.
Heart-Shaped Potato
President Obama is given a lot of weird stuff by voters, but presumably he has only once received a tiny, heart-shaped potato. Missouri woman Mary Apple brought the potato to the Late Show in September of 2009, and Obama requested it after hearing David Letterman talking about it. “Well, thank you so much for sharing,” Obama said. He cherished that potato for, oh, five minutes.
An “Over the Top” Request*
Many brave American soldiers have died to protect our right to vote for whichever candidate bears us in an arm-wrestling match. In July, at Ziggy’s Pub and Restaurant in Ohio, a man named Jeff Hawks tried to exercise that right. “I’ll arms-wrestle you for your vote,” Hawks challenged Obama. Obama countered that he would rather play basketball, but they ended up doing neither. Hawks will just have to base his vote on the candidates’ policies or something dumb like that.
*This is a reference to the 1987 Sylvester Stallone arm-wrestling movie Over the Top.
Yogurt Attack
While shaking hands in April outside a dive bar in Boulder, Colorado, President Obama was assaulted by a college student’s yogurt, which flew through the air and landed on his pants. “Oh lookit, you got me,” Obama wailed. “You got me!’’ Kolbi Zerbest, the University of Colorado freshman who couldn’t put down her yogurt for two seconds while meeting the president, blamed the paparazzi for pushing her.
