[Inspiring post by BrotherCadfael] Have you known any Section 8 types (i.e. crazy people) that you might have encountered in say the armed forces (or, note, similar circumstances-shooting for a broad target here). Bonus points if you could tell if they were (a) actually faking it, or (b) truly and completely off their nut.
No Section 8’s, but maybe one or two Group W’s.
There was this guy in our ROTC detachment we nicknamed “Spooky” who was just this super-soldier wanna be spy and MI who was basically always first to volunteer for anything ------- and not very good at any of it. He was offered a reserve commission and went off the deep end; literally had to be carried off campus to the local psych center. Last I heard (1983 maybe) he was leader of this big anti-military group.
I lived in a large subsidized rent apartment complex, where a lot of Section 8 people also lived. Some of them were pretty crazy too (including a succession of neighbors in the unit next door).
Pardon me, but is that what you call inspiring? No offense, but Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy is more inspiring than that.
Did you mean “inspired by?”
There was this one female soldier in our unit who had everyone convinced she was some sort of relative of the Rothschild family. She spoke with a vaguely English accent, and also spoke French. I didn’t know enough French to tell if she was really fluent or not, but she did seem to speak it pretty well. She loved to tell stories about growing up in France with her grandmama, and gave us the impression there was something mysterious about her connection with the Rothschilds, and she couldn’t say too much about it because, I dunno, something mysterious. She also liked to name drop lots of famous people she knew, etc. She had most of the unit eating it all up, even the commander. Then one day she came up to me and another female friend while we were running and went off on us both for being so standoffish and stuck up and mean to her. It was completely out of left field and we just looked at each other going “huh?” So Christmas comes along and people left for the holidays, including her. She never came back. Later we found out the investigators had tracked down her mother and it turned out she’d never been outside the country. She was from Wisconsin, and had spent time in a mental institution. Her whole persona was made up.
What does subsidized housing have to do with this?
In the military, section 8 is a form of discharge for being mentally unfit for service.
I worked with a chap in a small town in northern Saudi Arabia, we all lived on a compound. He arrived after most of us and seemed a bit odd to begin with. People would try to chat and he was very evasive, coming out with vague generalisations about where he was from, where else he worked etc. We came to the inclusion he was a private type and left him alone.
After a few weeks his behaviour started changing, he became quite furtive, paranoid even. We kept an eye on him as it was a small community so any distractions were welcome. After a few days he started roaming around the compound with a large kitchen knife, he said it was ‘for our protection’. People started becoming wary, locking their doors and windows at night, making sure they were never alone with him. He started getting aggressive, starting arguments for bizarre reasons nobody understood. He told me, on a rare occasion we talked, that he’d bought two kilos of butter recently. I said ‘Are you expecting company?’ but he didn’t see the funny side and just said ‘No.’
His behaivour became more and more erratic, he would stand outside a classroom and sing along to the calls to prayer, so our Saudi students could hear him. And so the management decided he should return to the UK. It’s not an unusual occurrence in the ME, people make mistakes or just are not suitable for the environment. They arranged the flights and a pick up, early morning to take him to the airport.
When the driver went to his villa he wasn’t there, and apparently had scaled the 10 foot perimeter walls and walked off. It took several days to find him, and another driver and couple of flights were arranged. This time the driver turned up 12 hours early and waited outside his door. He was taken to the airport and escorted to Riyadh, for his connecting flight. There he, again, did a runner and lived on the streets for a few weeks, until he was arrested. After a few days in a cell he was escorted to the airport, and escorted to London by a male, British nurse.
Section 8 of The Housing Act of 1937, as every schoolboy knows. It’s a truly hysterical pun, and one I make to myself when the conversation turns to low rent or military nutters.
In military parlance, ca. WWII a mental unfitness discharge is defined in Section 8 of United States Army Regulation 615-360. That’s old terminology. These days a different set of regulations governs discharges for various medical and/or mental reasons.
As for the OP: do you mean folks who were actually discharged for being nuts, or folks who should/would have if they and/or their team members had pursued it?
Again, looking for a wide net here, discharged or not, if you thought they might have qualified, knock yourself out.
A friend of a friend from High school. Pretty messed up story.
I didn’t know him all that well, but we hung out and he was a good guy, if a bit of a flake.
Later I found out he had joined the Navy on a sub, which surprised the hell out of me since he had always struck me and not very mentally stable, and probably the last place he should have been.
Later I heard from the friend that he had been kicked out for fighting and needed to be picked up at the airport. He got dropped off at his parents house, went straight to his Dad’s 12 gauge, and went to the garage and killed himself. His mom who had no idea he wasn’t on a Sub thousands of miles away found him dead in their garage, and got her head really messed up too from it.
A couple years later the whole story came out that it wasn’t for fighting in the first place, and that he had been kicked out for being mentally unfit, including a suicide attempt on the sub.
I worked for 26 years in rental property management. We had a lot of Section 8 (rent subsidy) tenants and a lot of TRA (Temporary Rental Assistance) tenants.
I’ve probably known more really crazy people than some shrinks.
We had a guy in my guard unit that was completely insane. He thought he was a 6 star secret general. When we were on annual training on an active duty post they made him get evaluated. He received a clean bill of health from the army shrinks. When one of my buddies complained about him later I asked, “He has documents saying he is sane, do you?”
He made it all the way to retirement. We did make sure he couldn’t go past 20 years. He was still on after 9-11 but we made damn sure he was not on any deployment rosters.
I know of exactly one guy in my 4 years in the Marine Corps who was received a general discharge for psychological purposes. The guy did have some social issues, and he did stand fully in the window of a 4th-floor barracks threatening to jump…that was the last “act” before he was discharged. My belief is that was a last act of desperation because he wasn’t having much luck getting out.
It took him about two years to get his discharge…hell at that rate, he probably only had a year or so left. Do I think he was actually crazy? Nope…he really, really did hate being there, though.
My last sight of him, we knew he had days left and we were out on a PT run. The van taking him to the airport happened to pass us, and he was looking out the back window with a huge smile on his face, waving like…well…crazy.
Now I knew plenty of guys who were certainly “crazy”, and they were safely ensconced until their honorable discharge.
Yep. That’s the first thing I though of when I saw this thread title…
…
…–Arlo Guthree
…The Alice’s Restaurant Massacree
Yeah, I thought the thread was about crazy people who live in subsidized housing. I’ve known a few.
Can’t imagine this thread’ll be much other than a bunch of critters I’ll feel bad for because they didn’t get proper help. Maybe wrong and some shirkers. We’ll see.
Meanwhile, I’ll be over here on the Group W bench, talking about crime, mother-stabbin’ and father-rapin’.
I worked with one guy who I’m pretty sure was a genuine sociopath. He always had a sort of ten mile stare going on. I never saw or heard him laugh or make a joke. He would smile, but it was always forced, like he was doing what was expected for the situation, and there was no warmth in it. The guy was just creepy.
There was a guy in the Navy who worked for me, and who flipped out one day. I’m pretty sure it was a combination of drugs and stress. One morning after quarters he asked me to come outside and talk to him. When we got out there, he started a rambling and largely incoherent monologue. He kept talking about a campfire and then he would point to a spot on the building wall and make some odd comment. Every time he turned to point at the wall, I moved a few more steps away from him. He ended up in the hospital later that morning.