I'm Laura Norton, and this is one strange thing,

the show where we search the nation's news archives for stories that can't quite be explained.

This week, we'd like you to join us on a trip, all the way back to Friday the 13th, September 2002.

Imagine this. The number one song on the Billboard charts was Avril Levine's Complicated.

Myspace was still a year away from launching. The number one movie in America was Barbershop,

a classic if we do say so ourselves. And strangers, it would be another year before the camera phone really took off in the United States. The world of cryptid hunting would never be the same. Our point here,

and yes, we do have one, is that this was a very long time ago. Sorry to break it to you.

And according to the subject of today's story, a man named Jason Padgett, who was 31 years old in 2002,

he was living in a bit of a time capsule even then.

Call it an extended adolescence, maybe, tied up in his teenage years, which took place in the late 1980s.

According to the News Tribune, Jason spent his formative years in both Alaska and Washington State,

and by the time he was a young adult, he'd settled into a life focused on, well, fun. Cars, girls, parties, you get the

idea. Jason would describe himself to numerous news outlets as a workout fiend and in terms of

emotional depth as a mile wide and a millimeter deep. He also, by his own admission, had a very serious

mullet. In case your memory fails you, that was not the on-tren aesthetic in 2002. In 2002, Jason was residing in Tacoma, Washington.

In a book he'd later co-write,

he described himself at the time as

having plenty of friends and a hard-won physique.

For some reason, he chose to show it off

in what he described as his, quote,

favorite outfit to go out in,

tight jeans, no shirt, and a leather vest.

...