Weird People in your Community

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

We live in military housing, but not actually on the base proper, and so we have full access to all the interesting people in the community.

Two of the most notable are “Crazy bike man” and “Crazy running guy”.

Crazy bike man rides a large, adult sized tricycle with a bike trailer hitched to it up and down the local roads. Often he has no shirt or shoes on, and wears a very small, white helmet. He has several flags, banners and bags hanging both off his bike and his trailer. I’ve seen him picking up garbage off the side of the road and putting it in his trailer. I also once saw him on roller blades going down the road. He was holding one of those orange triangle shaped flags you put on the back of bikes in each hand, and was making grand flourishes with his arms with each glide.

Crazy running guy runs. Alot. I see him about four days a week, running up and down the roads. Not so weird, you say? That’s all he appears to do. I’ll see him running one way down the road in the morning, and then see him coming the opposite way a few hours later. He will also, at times, appear to do his entire run backwards. In spite of all this, he actually appears to have a bit of a gut. Also, his stride and whole manner of moving is…off. I don’t really know how to describe it, except to say that it’s decidedly not an easy runners stride, but more…stiff.

There are a few others, but they are just run of the mill odd.

22

Along similar lines, the Master speaks.

23

Dragongirl, do you live by Zern’s Market? My younger sister lives about 30 miles west of Philadelphia and she says Zern’s Market attracts weirdos and inbreds. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

24

Living in a small city, we don’t have major weirdos, I guess. But my next door neighbor is pretty odd. She’s always ranting about pigeon poop! This is bad enough, but she gets way too personally involved with us. For instance, I planted a wildflower mix in my garde in front of my house, and six months later, I saw her (in MY garde!) pulling every single bloom of one particular flower, because they were “too tall for the house” HUH??? She also planted grass seed in my side lot (which we use for parking), not once, but twice, then strongly insinuated that I should stop parking there, because driving over the grass was what was killing it! Mind you, this is property we own outright and pay taxes on!

25

When I was in HS, we lived in a small town in Oregon. The house next door was quite run down, and we didn’t see much of its resident for awhile. This was because he only came out after dark, claimed to be a “fairy” and lived in the basement. His name was Leroy - pronounces Luh-Roy. Apparently, he was a fairly successful concert pianist in L.A. until a woman broke his heart, and he cracked up. I’d often see him when my friends and I went to Denny’s in the wee hours. He actually claimed to live on Denny’s coffee. My mom befriended him, and they’d chat at the mailbox occasionally. Being the diablolical person she is, she scared the hell out of the poor guy demonstrating her witch cackle. He avoided us after that. Sometimes, after midnight, we’d hear strains from the baby grand he was rumored to have in his basement.

In another small town my parents lived in in Oregon, we were next door to an agency that distributed medications to the mentally ill, and right behind the library. I worked at the local hangout type coffee shop. It’s not hard to figure out the crossover potential there.

Here, we have the lady who looks like she’s straight out of the '70’s. Bleached blonde hair, a bright pink tubetop and hotpants, lizard-like tanned skin, and she rides all over town on a banana-seat bicycle.

26

I live next to a large city park-it is very nice, wooded, with paths and picnic areas. I usually walk my dog up there. i often see an old man, who walks around with a (broken) police walky-talky radio. He sort of polices the park, and reports violations to the police 9with his broken radio). i found out later that he is retarded, and the PD has adopted him-they let him patrol the park with his broken radio, and it seems to suit him just fine.

27

Weird people in my community ? There are so many wierd people in my community I started a web page about them. Of course, I do live in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco.

28

99% of the people on this thread left me thinking ‘that’s not so weird’.
Maybe I’m tolerant or something.
Or weird myself.

29

Given what my brother has been known to eat on occasion, what your friend eats is not that weird, believe me.

F_X

30

I think the squirrel guy is cool. As for the Indian guy, as India was a British protectorate for so long, many Indians FROM INDIA have English accents if they are educated at all. From what I can tell the guy sounds like a fairly normal Indian man trying to acclimate himself to American life and not having the first clue on how to. He sounds pretty cool too. So he’s probably just a little geeky if anything.

I personally live in New York City so I could go on and on. I’ve found that in general everybody is pretty unique, and I couldn’t pinpoint particularly weird people, usually what strikes me as weird are people who proclaim to be normal and then have some really fucked up notions about the way the world works when you actually sit down and talk to them. You know the type (Those Mexican immigrants are ruining our country!). Hehe, or the woman on the bus I heard say “I am glad Ashcroft never got elected to the senate, I think he would have done a bad job there but he’s doing great as Attorney General” (I just hid in my paper) Hehe, I just view all this kind of stuff like American Beauty and it slides right off. Then again, I may be the weird one in the neighborhood, but it’s not obvious outwardly at least.

Erek

31

Nope, I’m no where near Philadelphia.

32

[hijack]

Excuse me???

  1. Indians educated in India DO NOT have English accents. We have Indian accents.

  2. The educated population of India is larger than the educated population of your country (whichever that might be :smiley: ).

[/hijack]

33

[continue hijack]

  1. … except for China, maybe!

[/end hijack]

Sorry!

34

Weird people are a part of every community, but I didn’t really start noticing them till I moved to the big city again and started being approached by a number of them for change…

One guy I remember seeing, he was dressed in a purple bodysuit covering him like a wetsuit with short legs and arms, and overtop of it he wore a black polka-dotted thong with neon pink polka-dots :eek: I saw him when working at a warehouse store that sold clothes for extremely cheap (like a lot of the stuff was on sale for only a few dollars) and he was trying on a little girls jumpsuit in the middle of the store :eek: At least he didn’t take of his clothes while doing that. I was working in that section and had to approach him to ask if he wanted a changeroom but he said no thanks.

Telling my Dad’s gf about him she mentioned she’s seen him around. He’s apparently homeless and runs around dressed like that all summer in the downtown core carrying safeway bags filled with stuff.

35

There’s a guy in my area who, as far as I can tell, spends every day walking up and down the nearest major street to me. I mean about twenty times a day. Dressed in shorts and a soccer-type shirt, until it gets really cold.

There’s also a halfway house for mildly retarded criminals a couple blocks away from me. The residents are interesting and harmless.

36

Oh, don’t be a poop, tell us.

Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty please with caramel and butterscotch and hot fudge and crumbled up cookie things and whipped cream.

Back in our old neighborhood in Rockville, MD, we had 3 weird/off/crazy neighbors/families.

Across the could-e-sac lived the Schwartzes. Mom and Dad were both deaf, the kids could hear. Mr. Schwartz would go into his garage and mess around with his power tools and mow the lawn.

At 11:30 PM.

This did not go over well with the neighbors.

2 doors down from us lived the Kapnecks. The 2 daughters, Erica and Bionca were quite normal and unbelievabley hot.

The 2 sons, Tad and Michael, were another story alltogether.

Tad was an excellent athlete until he got into drugs in 9th grade, and turned into the classic duggie burnout. He was arrested on 4 separate occasions for assaulting people at the Metro bus stop. He wore all black, all the time, and it was the same outfit. And I mean the same outfit. Black pants, black shoes and a black turtleneck.

Michael turned into the neighborhood drug dealer and was busted on at least 2 occasions.

Then there was mom, or as she preferred to be called, Mrs. Rosa Jesus Christ Adolf Hitler Saddam Hussein Kapneck. She was a schitzophrenic who would be fine as long as she took her meds. Problem was that since she was fine on her meds, she’d decide she didn’t need to take them anymore, and then the scitzo would rear its frightening head.

One Easter Sunday, she was lying on the could-e-sack down the street screaming that she was very happy that it was Easter, because jesus had come back to us and it was all good, but it was terrible because the vil was a foot because Satan was formulating his evilness.

At 3:30 AM.

Just a wee bit early.

One day during my senior year in high school I got home from school, and the doorbell rang and when I opened it Mrs. K was standing there. I have to say upfront that there was construction going on behind my jr high school, which was next to my high school. Our conversation went like this:

Mrs. K: Ben, do you go to Wootton? (That was the name of my high school.

B: Yeah.

Mrs. K *I don’t want you to go anymore because *they are killing the children and burying them behind Frost. (Which was the jr. high. So, I don’t want you to go anymore. Will you promise me that you won’t go?

B: Sure, I won’t go. I think I’ll call my mom and tell her. Thanks for letting me know. Shuts door

She also used to regularly ride her bike down to the Soviet embassy, which was a good 20 miles.

And finally, there were the Rettas.

There was mom and pop Retta and 5 kids, 4 boys and a girl.

The boys would ride their bikes around their house when it snowed in the winter.

Strange, but not weird.

One 4th of July, the boys were setting off firecrackers out in their front yard, when a firecracker went off in the oldest boys hand. He was jumping around and yelling/moaning in pain, as the youngest kept asking, “Did it hurt? Did it hurt? Did it hurt?”

Then the side door opened and pop Retta strides out, dressed in a T-shirt, shorts, knee high black socks and lo-cut chuck Taylors. He strides to one of their cars parked at the curb, opens the passenger door, rummages around for a moment, then re-emerges, shuts the door, and strides back into the house carrying an egg balanced on a spoon.

Now, that is weird.

37

Crazy Mary! Bless her heart. I kinda miss her.

Crazy Mary (no idea if her name is really Mary or not) lived in the dowtown (kinda bad) neighbourhod where my mom worked at a clinic. Crazy Mary may have been schizophrenic and was quite the colourful character – literally! She had short, buzzed hair that was usually either smurf blue or bright purple. She looked to be the same age for 20 years (she looked 60 for as long as anyone can remember).

She was often seen yelling and yelling and yelling. Yelling at what seemed to be nobody. In fact, she was yelling irrationally at an actual person, but her tirades lasted up to 45 minutes, so it seemed like she was yelling at “invisible people” because the actual human being was long gone.

One day my mom was walking to the clinic to work and got a little too close to Mary. That started a tirade because Mary thought that my mother wanted to steal her brand, new running shoes (about three sizes too big). A half-hour later she was still ranting about how “no one is gonna take my new shoes!”

You did have to be a little careful though. If you got too close she would give you a smack!

The police station is half a block from my mom’s clinic, so the police were quite used to Mary and her antics. As were all the neighbourhood locals. One day, Mary did her laundry. She wanted to air dry them, but didn’t have a clothesline. So she spread out all her “delicates” on the shrubs that ran along the walls of the police station and the entire perimeter of its lawn. Granny panties decorating the police station!

(They were okay with it though. It was “just Crazy Mary.” And they let her be because she never meant any harm.)

A social worker eventually moved her into a group home because her apartment building was condemned. None of the locals were informed, of course, because it’s not social services responsibility to inform a bunch of strangers that Mary was moving. So for a few months, my mom’s clinic would have concerned folks coming in to the clinic and asking if anyone knew anything about her. They were worried because they hadn’t seen her for so long.

In such a rough neighbourhhod, that was populated by far more frightening weirdos, it was kind of nice to see that Crazy Mary had a spot in the community and was actually missed.

38

I wouldn’t call him weird: but he definitely doesn’t fit the mold: Vince the Wheelchair Guy. He hangs around the local mall, and he is a trip. He has the same hair as Mike Nesmith of the Monkees (deliberate), and his chair is all decked out with stickers and paraphernalia. Before his condition forced him into a wheelchair (I never asked directly, but from what he’s said, it appears to be degenerative), he worked in the music industry as a promoter. He does talk a LOT, but he’s articulate, well-informed and insightful. When I worked at that calendar kiosk last Christmas season, he used to come by all the time, and frankly, I would have gone nuts during the post-New-Years-thirty-sales-a-day period without his company.

He and I like to talk about the same stuff, and he knows so much about rock musicians. When George Harrison died, I sought him out. When I saw Head and wanted to analyze it with someone, I sought him out. (He agrees with what other Dopers said: it’s not surreal. Guess I don’t really know what surreal is.) When I heard Warren Zevon was dying, I sought him out.

He has kind of an avuncular attitude towards the rugrats who swarm the mall. I’ve seen them deliberately rein themselves in around him. I’m not sure whether they’re afraid he’ll get them busted, or just don’t want to come off badly in front of the Cool Older Person, but at any rate, he’s more of a positive influence than the official security team! In fact, I’ve incorporated him into my novel: his character works the information booth at the fictional mall.

As I said, once he gets started talking, he keeps rolling indefinitely, and some people avoid him because of that. But he’s not one of those annoying people who will say nothing for hours, and it’s just a matter of telling him you have somewhere to be.

He is cool.

39

We here in St Cloud have a Superman.

He even has a web site.

He’s harmless, but weird nonetheless.

40

In my previous community in Henderson, Nevada (same apartment complex actually), we had a guy who murdered his girlfriend and then lived with the body for almost two weeks. There were also the alleged satanists arrested for killing small animals. I don’t think I have to explain why it’s my FORMER community.