Just this morning, I was heading towards my work building. There was an older gentleman up ahead of me, dressed very dapper: cap, well-groomed beard, suit, nice walking stick/cane with a brass handle. As I got closer to him he suddenly began a little soft-shoe routine with the cane, twirling it and doing a little dance. Then he stopped just as abruptly and continued strolling along. As I passed by him he presented his cane for me to see and proclaimed," You know, this can receive and transmit satellite signals."
I was at a loss for words. I finally said, “Uh, that’s great!” to which he smiled and nodded, and we continued on our seperate was. He was probably just an eccentric prof, but even if he was a random oddball he did make me smile.
My aunt told me once of a time she was riding the subway in Toronto. There was an extremely large woman sitting across from her, glaring at her evilly throughout the ride. My aunt had never seen this lady before and chose to ignore her. Finally this lady’s stop came up. As she got up, she glared again at my aunt and hissed, "I raised my son all by myself! "
Trust me, the subway / bus system in Toronto is rife with weirdos.
Off the top of my head: the woman who takes my regular bus with me every morning. She’s rather thin, short, with a squinty eye and short gray hair, wears a faded maroon jacket and carries about a big, bulky backpack. She sits in one particular seat everytime, and if someone’s already in it, she stands there, hovering and glaring pointedly, until they get off and/or feel uncomfortable and move.
The last time I took a Greyhound bus trip there was this guy in front of me who spent twenty minutes studying a paper children’s menu. Then he took out a red pencil and started circling one of the pictures on the menu; he went over the circle like twenty times. Then he put the menu away. Five minutes later he took the menu out again and looked at it for the remainder of the trip.
I’ve come to the conclusion that Sacramento Light Rail requires one babbling transient per car. I was actually present at the changing of the guard one day. Speaking in Tongues got off of the front of the car at the exact moment that Word Salad got onto the back and walked forward to take nearly the same seat.
Who needs transit when you have my family? My mom was visiting my aunt one day and during a lull in the conversation my aunt turns to mom and says, “Adam and Eve were American, you know.”
That’s only the tip of the iceberg with that woman. She wasn’t the most educated person but was too opinionated to hide it. We were in the car when she spotted a Pontiac Grand Prix. She was totally aghast that someone would name a car after their genitalia and made sure to state so rather loudly (although genitalia is not a word in her vocabulary). My uncle then instructed us, "Don’t tell her! "
Last week I saw a homeless guy in the alley behind me as I was buying a sourdough breakfast sandwich so I ordered an extra and drove around to give it to him. He took it as if he’d been expecting it and said “The tuna’s making for San Francisco.” and walked off hurriedly as if he had an appointment.
I damn near wrecked about five minutes later, so intent I was on trying to figure out what in the heck he was talking about.
Perhaps 15 years ago, I was riding the Metro (DC-area) home from work about 9 PM. A 30-ish fellow sat down in front of me. He seemed well-enough dressed in nice slacks, button-down shirt, and sweater, but he was carrying a leather or plastic folder (the sort of thing you have an 8.5x11 pad in, plus random extra papers) that had news clippings of Ronald Reagan taped all over it (this was in the late 80s, and Ronnie was no longer in office). It was covered in the clippings. Then I realized that his cufflinks and sweater buttons all had some sort of Reagan or White House emblem on them.
This fellow attempted to strike up a conversation with me. I was trying to be polite (when really I just wanted to be left to lapse into my usual post-work coma) so I tried to respond, but it was definitely an odd conversation. Then he wanted me to demonstrate a “high-five handshake”. I tried once or twice, then he tried grabbing my hand.
At that point I moved to another seat and fortunately he did not follow.
In recent years, I’ve come to suspect that he may have been somewhere on the autistic spectrum, due to his apparent obsession with Reagan and his extremely poor social skills. Even if not autistic, he clearly wasn’t “all there” one way or another. So I feel a bit more sympathetic now than I did then - back then I was simply Weirded Out.
Then there was the Dollar Lady - a somewhat well-dressed woman (had a decent-looking if unfashionable coat, and appeared clean etc.) who for a year or more staked out a corner near my office in New York, back in the early 90s. She would ask passersby if they could spare a dollar. One of my colleagues tried offering her a few coins once and she refused, rather snippily I gather.
I was going into a McDonalds at 3 am for coffee (long story) when a streetperson approached me. He told me he didn’t want money, he didn’t smoke or drink, but he was hungry. He asked me if I would get him a fish sandwich and fries. I told him no problem.
Turns out this McDonalds had a late night menu going. No fish sandwiches. So I got him a quarter pounder with cheese and fries. When I told him the situation he thanked me but he didn’t want the burger! His heart was set on a fish sandwich.
It was soooo tempting to say something about beggars/choosers but I held back.
I made a post about the wierdos in the library I frequent, but just to summarize, there are the Hitler Brothers, Simba, La Comadreja and the Phantom farter, just to name a few. I’ve also recently discovered Anger-management girl, this diminutive filipino student who has honest-to-god temper tantrums in the library over mundane stuff.
Well, Leslie is Austin’s most famous strange guy. A tall, bearded cross-dresser prone to mini-skirts, I always see him out riding his bike in a thong. :eek:
I was in San Diego a couple of years ago, staying on the beach. This guy skated by wearing a captain’s hat and a cardboard boat. As he skated past, you could see he’d painted waves on his ass. Very interesting…
In the summer between high school and college (early 80’s) I worked at an insurance office in downtown Ventura, CA. Almost every day at lunchtime I would see the same guy wandering around the streets in the area–he was in his 50s, clean-shaven, wearing a pastel colored suit (pink, green, or blue), the strangest blond wig with curls rolled up on either side, and white dress shoes. He carried a manila envelope up next to his head like he was listening to it, and mumbled softly to himself.
I never did find out what was up with him, though the rumor in the area was that he was (or believed himself to be) an inventor, and the envelope contained the plans to something he was afraid might be stolen.
During the 1994-95 school year, I was a student at Berklee College of Music in Boston. There was a guy that we all referred to as “The God-Walker,” who would powerwalk past our dorm on Mass. Ave. every day, listening to his walkman and shouting the lyrics to Madonna’s “Like A Prayer” in a monotone bellow that would carry all the way up to my room on the sixth floor. To this day, I wonder if he ever listened to anything else.
Hah! It took me a while to remember this one - I think I’d blocked it. While meandering with friends through downtown Morgantown, we happened to pass by a glazed-eyes transient walking the other way. Now, to be fair, I don’t know he was a transient. Evidence strongly suggests he was.
And he wasn’t muttering to himself. He was singing. Tom Petty’s ‘Last Dance with Mary Jane.’
