Run a search on threads I’ve started, and you’ll find a few examples.
Mr. Bagel Dog penis, Mr. I can kill people but I can’t read my glucometer, Mr. I’ve got a scheme to escape, Mr. Buttery, Mr. Urethra stuffer, Mr. this abscess makes a convenient place to store contraband, Mr. I had a uterus transplant last year, all come to mind.
There was a grad student here for a few years who insisted that all governments are inherently corrupt; some are just more corrupt than others. OK, that’s not too unusual, especially on a college campus. Except that his example of a country that was more corrupt than others was Canada.
Apparently, he had bought a house up there, but then the border guards wouldn’t let him through, because there’s a law in Canada that nobody who owns property there is allowed into the country. Only later, the story changed to he wasn’t allowed in because he’s a Jew, and Canadians are so notoriously anti-Semitic. Never mind that he thought it ought to be absolutely obvious to everyone that the Sun was God; he was a Jew.
Last I heard, he was trying to emigrate to Israel, since they couldn’t possibly turn him down. But I’m pretty sure that the Right of Return still allows exceptions for crazy folks.
I have a cousin Paul, who in his early adulthood, just kinda shut down. He quit working, stopped socializing and kept to himself. He sleeps outside in warm weather or in someones garage if it’s cold. Hangs out at the library or donut shop all day and has basically become the neighborhood homeless guy. My aunt & uncle live nearby and have begged him to get help, but he refuses. They have to bribe and plead with him just to come in the house to shower and eat something. The local police said there’s nothing they can do to force him to get help since he is harmless.
It’s been years now and if I see him wandering the streets, I’ll flag him down and give him a $20 and talk to him awhile. Things will probably never change for him.
A couple years ago I was driving to my shitty, afternoon shift factory job and I was in a crabby mood because it was sweltering hot out, traffic was bad and I hated my job. As I drove down the road I caught a glimpse of my cousin leaning against a building watching traffic go by. The weird thing is, he had a peaceful contented look on his face. I had to laugh to myself because maybe I was the crazy one dealing with the daily grind and he wasn’t so crazy after all.
I in no way meant to indicate that I don’t cherish my uncle or his poem. I was trying to illustrate the one-dimensional way that some people react to the mentally ill. Not to pick on the OP, but just for illustrative purposes, we have the comment that he’s freaked out the crazy guy knows his name and what he looks like. People tend to be very uncomfortable around the mentally imbalanced, and I would be lying to say I am always comfortable around my uncle. In addition to his often horrifying choice of conversational topics, he has a tendency to get violent and is* deeply *flawed in other ways. However, I often get frustrated when my friends or family members dismiss him as some kind of weirdo who should never be taken seriously. Maybe the poem wasn’t the best illustrative example of the way he is different, but the emotional core is there. It’s painful when other people reject him in this way. I love him and I always will.
Years ago I was an assistant court clerk in the Los Angeles Probate Master Calendar Court. Most of the cases involved wills and executors, but on Thursdays the Public Guardian’s deputies would bring in a few souls to be judged in need of guardianship. Our judge would ask them a few questions, but their commitment was a foregone thing, and the judge was just doing the minimum required of him by law.
One man swore he could not possibly be dishonest because he would trip if he told a lie. He proceeded to tell the judge something we all knew was untrue (Like today is Wednesday when it was obviously Thursday) and tried to step forward and tripped over his own feet. He proudly pointed this out to the judge as evidence that he was honest.
He also claimed the flying saucer people landed in his backyard regularly and serenaded him with Christmas carols, which he quite appreciated.
I once followed some nut shouting at people about Jesus and the devil for 6 blocks just to see what he would do next.
He just kept raving.
I would too if you followed me for six blocks shouting at people about Jesus and the devil.
My first apartment had a laundry room in the basement. Everyone would put their laundry in and go back to their apartment, go down and put it in the dryer later, then go back and get it when it was done. Except one guy. He was a real nice guy, probably in his 50s. He walked to work nearby and had never driven a car. And this wasn’t in a city. Around here, if you don’t drive, you better have someone in the home who does. But he didn’t. He tried to get his license while I lived there, but failed the test over and over. Someone told me he found out he was “ate up with cancer” so I always felt sorry for him.
Anyway, he would be there for hours doing his laundry. He’d divide clothes up into far too many categories and wash them separately, then start the dryer to warm it up and dry everything one by one. These washing machines cost $1 in quarters to use, and the dryer was 75 cents. And he wore the crappiest clothes.
I would usually give a polite “hey how’s it goin”, grab my laundry and go, but he caught me one winter night with one foot literally out the door and asked if I ever watched Texas Walker Ranger. Although I said no, he proceeded to talk about the show and Chuck Norris for an hour as I stood there holding my laundry with one leg freezing out in the cold. I couldn’t get a word in edgewise, and he really was a nice guy and I felt sorry for him, so I toughed it out.
And I’ll give him this, he knew a lot about them. It was like watching the bonus material on every Walker Texas Ranger DVD, and the amazing thing is that he didn’t have a DVD player, a computer, or any other easy avenue of information on the subject. And this was all before the internet got ahold of Chuck Norris anyway.
I used to work at a tutoring center for learning disabled kids. One of the boys was the son of a man whose name I can’t mention for confidentiality reasons. Suffice to say he is well-known in Hollywood and there is a television character based on him.
This man was one of the most outrageous guys I have ever met. He was perfectly courteous to the staff, but the things he would do! One time, in the middle of an important conference about his son’s progress, he got up and started doing lunges and push ups in the middle of the room. Another time, during an Open House presentation at the center (darkened room, rows of seats, director up front with a projector), he started scuttling from row to row and whispering the current basketball game score to all the men in the room. He didn’t even know these men! And, his son was part of the presentation!
But my favorite incident is the time he came bursting into the staff room as I was sitting alone in there working on a project. “Oh my God, I am so hungry!” he exclaimed as he grabbed the director’s box of cereal off the staff fridge, tore it open, and downed a handful, before racing out again.
I have no idea how this man has become the success he is. He is absolutely crazy.
All righty…
So I was watching a movie with a friend. The Dark Knight. There was me, and another guy in my row. He was 3 seats to my right. My friend sat in front of me one row for extra legroom. The theater was small and pretty empty. Anyway, this guy couldn’t stop moving during the movie and was talking to himself, but I didn’t want to give him a weird look so I payed no attention to him.
After getting to a late scene in the movie my buddy went out to take a phone call. About 5 minutes after that the movie ended. I get up to walk out and the guy approaches me… “So, what do you guys do for a living”?.. This guy was a balk, thin/athletic, white male in his late thirties. I didn’t know what to say, it was quite an awkward question at that moment.
So, I go, “we make movies”… Me and my buddy, as well as some other people on our team are in the film industry but now we’re getting deeper hopefully making our first full feature film to be released in the next year or so. Anyway, after telling him this he was thrilled!.. “Can I be in a movie”… “I have so many ideas”… blah blah… I said I don’t know, we can talk more. Note that while he asked me these questions he seemed perfectly normal. I have a good eye for spotting weirdo’s… I knew he was a weirdo, but hoped it wasn’t that bad…
Now I begin walking out of the theater and he’s following me still, continuing with the questions. Then he goes on talking about how he’d been in movies before. Here I am like, right… I look at this guy and he’s got to be homeless. Dirty feet with slippers on, torn jeans, a big stain on his shirt, and a really bad job at shaving… Had the theater not been dark I’d have noticed this. But now that we’re outside it’d be hard to derail the conversation.
So now I’m outside and I meet up with my buddy. He gets off the phone and Joe the schizo, we’ll just call him Joe from now on, goes on to introduce himself and we politely introduce ourselves.
So here we are, right out front of the theater. A good crowd of about 50 people sitting and standing around. We continue talking about movies and the possibilities of him being apart of our team. We had to feel it out some, he was a bit fidgety and his hands were always shaking… When he spoke he spoke with a stare of a thousand years while he looked at you.
He mentioned he had been an extra on ER, 50 First Dates, and some others. We told him we had everything planned for our first film and it’d be impossible fitting him in anywhere. We do plan to make a short in the coming days though. So we said to Joe “Can you write? Do you got any good stories?”… Joe say’s “Oh, I got stories, I got thousands of stories. I want my life to be a reality show… Let’s do a reality show of my life!!!”… We tell him we’re only focused on feature films and if he wants a reality show go to LA or contact MTV.
He then goes onto his life story. Well, not his life story, but his past 5 years of life, how things had really gone the the drain for him. He had this habit of getting really emotional while talking about things and the longer he’d talk consistently the louder he’d get and the redder his face would get… Here we were in the midst of 50 strangers and Joe… he was very, very loud. So I say, let’s walk over here to the side, out of the way of people to have a bit of privacy.
So we walked over to the side out of the way. Mainly so the entire crowd wasn’t giving is death glares. He then went on talking about how he’d just gotten out of prison yesterday. Which is why he was homeless and living out of his car. He said he had 19 TRO’s against him (temporary restraining orders) and that he’d been in and out of jail the past few years. Now, things got a bit weird at this point but me and my friend are not to worry. My friend has 20 years of mixed martial arts training and I have had a bit myself. We were on our toes a little bit but it didn’t seem the guy was a threat, he just had some major mental issues.
Talking on the sidewalk his voice got even louder. And it was really uncomfortable because it was afternoon and traffic was thick. Every few seconds 30-50 cars would be at a stand still right next to us and everyone was watching… At one point he went on talking about his weight, and that he’d lost 50 pounds over the year and took his shirt off right there in front of us… We’re thinking “wtf”… “Uh, that’s not necessary”… So he put his shirt back on. Again, that grabbed the attention of the masses. We were the sideshow enjoyment for the passing vehicles.
Back to his life story, he goes on about people he knows, that have a lot of money. We mentioned a finders fee for people who bring investors to us. He really got into this… and wanted to start calling people. But, he had no phone. So, he had to borrow ours. No, I sure as hell wasn’t letting him use mine, but my friend didn’t care. It was the entertainment for the week.
So Joe starts calling up these really big wig corporate people affiliate with Morgan Stanley, the Lakers, and a few others. Supposedly the guy was professional triathlete back a few years ago. I Googled it and the story checked out. He had called about 10 different people leaving messages like “hey, I want to come snowboarding this month, could you fly me over (which would be Colorado) and we’ll have lunch”… Most conversations he had were in this fashion. He always failed to mention the investment opportunities or our film company, it seemed he was more focused on getting a plane ticket out of town.
During one phone call a security guard walked by and he started dancing around him shouting “Rent a cop” “rent a cop”… The security guard started half-way running away. I assume this guy had a run in with Joe before and he didn’t want any business with him so he didn’t bother reporting him. Police officers were driving by every 10 minutes or so giving us the looks. We were literally 500 feet from the Federal building and another block away was a major courthouse. This guy was being watched…
After what seemed to be hours of listening to this guy repeat himself 500 times we realized we got to go. We only continued speaking with the guy out of entertainment. He was pretty funny and interesting, but very random, loud, and emotional- not the type of guy we’d want on a movie set. So we tried for about 30 minutes to end the conversation and had finally gotten free of the guy…
We told him to email us a short story, which he said he’d really love to do, but he as no email account or computer so he’d have to walk over to the college to get online. Haven’t talked with my friend yet so I don’t know if he sent anything yet. I doubt anything will come through. The guy’s behavior was so random it seemed he had a slight case of Alzheimer’s so I doubt he’d even remember to do these things. Surprisingly the guy had a great memorization of numbers. He had remember 10 different phone numbers and had just served 10 months.
He was like a rainman almost… but not the kind of rainman you want to hang around. He’s better left doing his own things. He really didn’t like working with people and wanted everything focused around him. We were a team, so it’d never work out with this guy. Quite a character he was, and I’m sure he has some really fascinating stories as well as an imagination to make LOTR look like Barney. If he sends anything through it’d sure be interesting to see how things play out, should his idea’s be of any value.
We wished the guy good luck before parting ways and to stay out of trouble. I highly doubt that he’ll stay out of trouble. I’m sure he’s already back where he was 2 days ago. The way he acted publicly had everyone kind of worried. Not a type who could blend in with society. It’s a sad case, but that’s the way things are some times.
I’ll remember.
Ah, but it is a fine poem, and it makes perfect sense. The first two lines, all by themselves, are perfect and complete.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that at all. I got your message–that you absolutely do cherish your uncle and everything he brings to your life, the good and the bad, because you love him. And I think that’s really sweet and I wish I were that nice.
I just let my original celebration of the poem devolve into a game of Oppression Olympics, and that’s my fault. I apologize.
Hostile Dialect,
Hostile Dialect, Narcissist
My office once owned a rooming house where we would rent to anyone who would pay, or whom Social Services would pay for. The people in there would either have been homeless, in jail, or dead, so the gummit turned a blind eye to it.
I had to deal with the many crazies that lived there.
When we closed the place, we got many a call from people who worked for the City to thank us.
I live in a big city and use public transportation…sometimes it seems like that’s all there is when you’re riding a bus, especially during off-rush hours.
When you run a cash register, you realize there are a lot of wackos running around loose.
I recall one customer from when I worked at McDonalds. She wasn’t the weirdest, but she was a regular. She came through the drive-thru every day for a small coffee with two creams and ten sugars. She had a small, beat-up station wagon which was 80% full of Great Dane. If you so much as made eye contact with the Great Dane, he would go berserk barking and jumping, and the whole car would shake until you thought it might roll over. As for the lady herself, she had two personalities: Odd but Manageable, or Crazy Cunt From Hell. ObM would talk to you about something that had nothing to do with coffee, McDonalds, or anything else; CCFH was barely able to place her order without cursing you out. One day, ObM ordered her coffee and she had to pull aside and wait while it brewed. In an effort to be nice, the girl in the front drive-thru added all the cream and sugar before she brought it out. (This was in the old days, before that was standard.) When she took it to the car, CCFH threw it back at her, screaming that she wouldn’t drink the poison and she knew we were trying to kill her. She went on freaking until we thought we’d have to call the cops, but fortunately left before the Great Dane shattered the whole car to bits. The next day, ObM had no apparent memory of this event.
olivesmarch4th, I have a mentally ill family member, and I know what you are talking about. Your post has me sitting here sobbing. Best wishes for your uncle, honestly.
I once met a guy who claimed that Ronald Reagan and his cabinet members were the seven devils of Hell and that Hell was located directly under the Washington Monument. My friends and I were having a drink with him when he pointed at a car and said that Reagan was watching him. We looked where he was pointing but only saw a junked car–there was no sign of Reagan. The guy was drawing geometric designs on sheets of paper and he said that he was going to stick them on people’s doors in order to promote world peace.
This is eeriely observant. You should make a collection of his poetry and see if you can get it published.
I, too, like his poem, and I pretty much hate poetry. It made sense to me, which means I am crazy.
I don’t recall ever meeting the guy, but a friend use to have a room mate that use to save his urine in jars.
When they kicked him out from the house they were renting, they found all these jars of urine.
I, too, liked the poem–it sounds Rumi-ish