Your random crazy person, and encounters thereof.

In My Humble Opinion
41

The “Naked Guy” attending Berkeley the same time I did. It was in all of the news stories of the day as a human interest story (or a make fun of the crazy hippees at Berkeley story, I am not sure which).

Friends and Family would ask- why doesn’t someone confront him? Well several reasons.

  1. Berkeley is crazy/artist friendly to a fault.

  2. No policy was directly on point (at the time) as it had not occurred to anyone that someone would REPEATEDLY show up on campus completely naked.

And 3. (and most importantly) this Guy was huge-- NFL Linebacker Huge- and clearly more than a bit unhinged. I am sure that many folks were ready to give him trouble until they saw how tall, wide and “not all there” this guy was.

Eventually he was dropped from the school (for non-attendance, I think, not excessive non-clothes wearing).

42

Sweet Jesus! There should be a law against those things in Manhattan! Now I can’t tell if a persons on a cell phone or crazy or both!

I don’t really have any crazy people storries. We have crazy people here in NY like other communities have, I don’t know, raccoons or something. I don’t really notice them anymore, but they seem to scare my girlfriend.

43

Oh, man, and I thought that smelly person I had to sit next to on that same ride was bad. :eek:

44

Main Entry: phy·lac·tery
Pronunciation: f&-'lak-t(&-)rE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -ter·ies
Etymology: Middle English philaterie, from Medieval Latin philaterium, alteration of Late Latin phylacterium, from Greek phylaktErion amulet, phylactery, from phylassein to guard, from phylak-, phylax guard
Date: 14th century
1 : either of two small square leather boxes containing slips inscribed with scriptural passages and traditionally worn on the left arm and on the head by Jewish men during morning weekday prayers
2 : AMULET
From Merriam-Webster.

45

Hell, one more ellipsis and I’d be ready to put you on my list.

46

Once when I was on my way home from work this woman got on the CTA train; she was well-dressed and IIRC was even carrying a briefcase. This was rush hour so the train was fairly crowded, and she ended up standing in the aisle near me. After a few minutes she starts glaring at the people standing around her and muttering to herself, gradually getting louder and louder. I think the gist of her “conversation” was complaining about people crowding her, but her tone was very shrill and she kept jerking around; as the train emptied the topic of her complaining shifted to the people staring at her. Finally the train got to her stop and she got off.

47

Oh, I forgot about another crazy person that I went to school with. She looked normal and all, and she spoke both Spanish and English. She was in my wildlife conservation class, and there was a tiny model of a human skeleton in a glass box in the back of the room. It was probably about a foot tall. She used to pull up a chair in front of that thing and just talk to it. Rather creepy, and we called her simply “Crazy”.

48

If talking to myself is crazy, then I don’t want to be sane. I’m the most interesting person I know.

49

Sit down, ya’ll, and list to the story of Tatoo Joe.

It was within my first few weeks as a projectionist at a 12plex. The computer animated movie Dinosaur was out. I was down in the lobby getting a drink and chatting with the Assistant Manager, Jason, a very good friend of mine. Before any of the movies get out, a man approaches us and asks to see a manager. Jason says “I’m the manager on duty, how can I help you?”

No, this man seemed to be about 70ish, thing white hair, a long beard, wearing (I can’t make this stuff up) a bathrobe over his clothes, and is filing his nails with a pink emmory board. And he says to my friend, Jason, as if here were doing him a favor in telling him this:

“I used to raise dogs that look like dinosaurs.”

“Really. That’s interesting.”

“They got [some kind of dog skin disease]. Did you know these places don’t let you bring dogs into them?”

“Yes sir, it’s policy. Unless it’s seeing-eye dogs or something.”

“But I found out that there’s no rules against snakes.”

About five minutes of listening to this I had to head up to the booth to let the laughs out. It was quite an abdominal workout. When I came back down, the man was just leaving, urged along by his very embarassed looking wife. I asked Jason what I missed, and it was a lot. This guy was called Tatoo Joe because he used to travel up to New York and give homeless guys tatoos as a free service.

This guy didn’t seem to actually be crazy, just very lonely. I will never forget the day I met Tatoo Joe. It was one of the most bizarre experiences of my life. And for years after, me and Jason will just say to each other, out of the blue, “You know, I used to raise dogs that look like dinosaurs.”

God bless you, Tatoo Joe. It’s an honorable service you provide homeless guys and your pet snakes.

50

Not so much crazy as bizarre - some years back, I worked in the same office as an electrical engineer who would start conversations in the middle. I suspect he’d been noodling over something in his head, and when he decided to say something, it was completely nonsensical. A group of us might be discussing the news of the day and he’d come over and say things like: “It wouldn’t hurt anything if we used a heavier gauge wire, since we’ve got some downstairs.” He got weirder as he got older - especially when he started dying his hair. It went from almost white to solid brown overnight. I often wondered if he experimented with voltages…

51

I detailed it in my Scary Christian Encounter thread.

52

OMG, I’ve done this to my husband before! I’ll just be thinking and suddenly blurt out one of my thoughts with no regards to whether the rest of the topic was actually discussed aloud. It usually happens if I’m very distracted.

53

Well, while living in Bielefeld for almost two years I did get to see “Ernie” a couple of times. Here’s a link with some info on “Ernie”

54

You are not alone. I have also done this. It really irritates him.

I usually do it when I’ve been thinking about something complex for awhile and come to some sort of conclusion or puzzling. I then have to state the conclusion or ask a question. Because I’ve been thinking about it for awhile, I usually don’t want to go through all of the steps I took to get to that thought (by saying them out loud) again. I don’t think that this is very concious, I just think that I want to get straight to the point.

I’m doing a poor job of explaining this but I think it can best be summed up by what is implied in the exclamation “Eureka!” Of course I’m not spouting out the theory of relativity.

55

Then there was the lady who put lipstick on her teeth and appliances in other people’s homes. Back when I lived in the middle of poverty (instead of my current home on the edge of poverty), I moved from one apartment in a complex to another. It was one of those “same rent, same landlord, better location” type deals. Anyway, when I started to move in I discovered a drier in the middle of this small entryway I had (I called the room my foyer). A few minutes of amateur detective work and I discovered that it belonged to the scary lady next door. My apartment’s previous occupant had allowed the woman to store her drier in what was now my place. So I went over and knocked on the door and this monstrous woman with saggy (think basset hound) white powder-covered skin, wild bloodshot eyes, and artificial yellow hair answered. What most bothered me, though, was the lipstick on her teeth–it had to be smeared there on purpose. I asked the woman when she could get her drier out of my home. She said in a few days, when her boyfriend showed up to move it to some place in town that buys used washers and driers. I said fine. A few days went by. I went over and asked again; same reply. A few days later I repeated the chore. By this time, of course, I’m getting irritated. I tried to explain that it wasn’t my drier but hers, that I was being nice letting her keep the thing in my way but that it had to move, and so on. At first she ignored what I was saying, instead wanting to know if she could take pictures of my nieces and her friends who were visiting–which, to me, was pretty creepy. And then, all of a sudden . . . SNAP!!! “I thought you were going to be nice neighbors and now you’re being mean and I never asked for you damn people to move in there in the first place and you’re gonna get kicked out!” She moved from arguments that almost made sense (in a way) to some incomprehensible nonsense. At one point I remember saying, at a level between talking and yelling, “Get that fucking drier out of my apartment,” and she began screaming that she was going to call the police and have me thrown in jail for cursing her. And the whole time my eyes were glued to that mouth, with those big blubbery lips pulled back to reveal those lipstick-smeared teeth. Finally, after consulting the cops to make sure I wouldn’t get in trouble for doing something to what was technically somebody else’s property, me and a friend moved the drier out of my apartment and placed it in front of hers. It was probably wrong of me to plant the drier right up against her door so that she could only open it a couple inches, but . . . well, no excuse, that was just wrong. Anyway, for the next month or so, I didn’t let my nieces outside alone or play anywhere near the lipstick ogre’s apartment, and I watched the weeds grow up around the drier. Then one day the drier was just gone. A few days later I moved into a different apartment complex and I never met any of my neighbors there.

I have other stories about crazy people, but this one took up so much more space than I thought it would when I started typing that I think I’ll end this post here.

56

Then there was the lady who put lipstick on her teeth and appliances in other people’s homes. Back when I lived in the middle of poverty (instead of my current home on the edge of poverty), I moved from one apartment in a complex to another. It was one of those “same rent, same landlord, better location” type deals. Anyway, when I started to move in I discovered a drier in the middle of this small entryway I had (I called the room my foyer). A few minutes of amateur detective work and I discovered that it belonged to the scary lady next door. My apartment’s previous occupant had allowed the woman to store her drier in what was now my place. So I went over and knocked on the door and this monstrous woman with saggy (think basset hound) white powder-covered skin, wild bloodshot eyes, and artificial yellow hair answered. What most bothered me, though, was the lipstick on her teeth–it had to be smeared there on purpose. I asked the woman when she could get her drier out of my home. She said in a few days, when her boyfriend showed up to move it to some place in town that buys used washers and driers. I said fine. A few days went by. I went over and asked again; same reply. A few days later I repeated the chore. By this time, of course, I’m getting irritated. I tried to explain that it wasn’t my drier but hers, that I was being nice letting her keep the thing in my way but that it had to move, and so on. At first she ignored what I was saying, instead wanting to know if she could take pictures of my nieces and her friends who were visiting–which, to me, was pretty creepy. And then, all of a sudden . . . SNAP!!! “I thought you were going to be nice neighbors and now you’re being mean and I never asked for you damn people to move in there in the first place and you’re gonna get kicked out!” She moved from arguments that almost made sense (in a way) to some incomprehensible nonsense. At one point I remember saying, at a level between talking and yelling, “Get that fucking drier out of my apartment,” and she began screaming that she was going to call the police and have me thrown in jail for cursing her. And the whole time my eyes were glued to that mouth, with those big blubbery lips pulled back to reveal those lipstick-smeared teeth. Finally, after consulting the cops to make sure I wouldn’t get in trouble for doing something to what was technically somebody else’s property, me and a friend moved the drier out of my apartment and placed it in front of hers. It was probably wrong of me to plant the drier right up against her door so that she could only open it a couple inches, but . . . well, no excuse, that was just wrong. Anyway, for the next month or so, I didn’t let my nieces outside alone or play anywhere near the lipstick ogre’s apartment, and I watched the weeds grow up around the drier. Then one day drier was gone. I moved out soon after and never met my new neighbors.

I have other stories about crazy people, but this one took up so much more space than I thought it would when I started typing that I think I’ll end this post here.

57

Sorry. I don’t know what happened.

58

In the early-mid nineties, here in Cleveland OH, we had the “Euclid Ave Kung-Fu Guy”.

He’d wait in doorways and around corners, leap out in front of you, do some sort of martial-arts looking moves, and move on. He wouldn’t hit you, just kind of make you flinch or jump. He wouldn’t even get so close with his moves as to even touch you. But it was kind of disturbing, because you never knew if he’d actually snap and give you a bloody nose.
I stared him down one day (I spotted him from across the street) and he started acting as if he’d walked into a spider-web; flailing his hands about his face and being acting spastic.
I don’t walk down Euclid Ave much anymore 'cuz I don’t work in that part of town now. Don’t know if he’s still there.

59

the people i’ve met aren’t quite so strange as some listed already but here goes:

at my university there were some notables:

  • the guy who would only wear shorts and short sleeves, even in below zero weather. he sometimes crossed his arms over his chest if he was cold.
  • the guy who always wore a long sleeved dress shirt and long sleeved sweater, even in over a hundred degree, 100% humidity weather.
  • the guy who always wore a toga with very little underneath (i’ve never checked for sure…) - though to be fair i don’t think that was craziness, just oddness.

also, growing up in boston, there was a guy who would wear headphones and walk around (and i mean i’ve seen him everywhere in the city!) shouting like he was singing, but only on one note in a really hoarse voice. i’m told that he might be schizophrenic (i think that was it) and that he’s just wearing headphones so that people won’t be as freaked out. but the first couple times i saw it it was really odd.

60

When I was working in Boston, there was this lady who would come around the station early in the morning. She would just walk around looking in thedisplay windows, since most of the food court wasnt openyet. She’d scream that “we cant afford no damn lobster! it’s too damned expensive and you know it!” The weird part was that she was always by herself, and that no one sold lobster. I used to see her downtown when I worked Washington St occasionally.

Then there was the lady who used to come in the downtown store. She’d never buy anything, just ask to use our bathroom so she could wash her hands. One day she pulled me aside and quietly informed me that the aliens were taking over, but they wouldnt get her because she was clean, or something like that. She went in to wash her hands, came out with a towel wrapped around her waist. When we cleaned the bathrooms later, we found a pair ofpants and panties next to the toilet. It was so disturbing…