People are Strange

Ever feel like you have a 'weirdo' target on your back?

Like you emit this electro-magnetism much like the island, and bizarre things are invariably attracted to you?

Let me explain.

Ever since I was little, I have always met this interesting characters in my life. And I don't mean like, "Oh, crazy uncle Rick is here! He's a wild card!". No, no, no. I mean like people who claim to be princes, millionaires, involved in secret military gang warfare, have terminal diseases, make you perform their poetry out loud upon first meeting them, etc. etc.

I find my life is engaged with these people more than the 'normies'.

This may explain my lack of patience with most people.

It takes someone super crazy to really surprise me anymore.

Let's take One Armed-Bob for instance. Now, One Armed Bob was this gentlemen who owned to laundry mat next door to the video store where I worked as the Hawaiian Shaved Ice Girl for the later part of my childhood. Bob had one arm. I'm sure you've got that by now. And he looked like a homeless vagabond. He would hang up people's rugs on clotheslines and just beat the shit out of them with his one arm. It was like watching a goddamn wind up toy. Just relentless.

Now Bob would always come into the video store and talk to me and other people in there. This was a small town and everybody knew who he was. Come in and chat for a bit, as he was always pretty chatty...probably to make up for the awkwardness of renting all the porn in the back room. Which, FYI, seeing your first grade teacher rent a bunch on bondage videos, really puts your life in perspective.

So, one day, Bob does not show up for work. He doesn't show up the next day, or the day after. People are going to his house, and he is not answering or anything. Rumors start flying that Bob is dead. They close down the laundromat and start planning vigils and things of that sort.

My brother is rather upset at the news, being the bleeding heart that he is.

Then about 2 weeks later Bob walks his one-armed ass back into the video store, with this huge shit -eating grin on his face. Of course, everyone is stoked that he is alive. When asked where he was and what happened. He just shrugged and said, "I can't believe how much everyone cared that I was gone."

Faked his own death.

Real classy.

Then he just sauntered off and went back to beating the shit out rugs with that one arm of his.

That was an interesting summer.

Much more demented things have occurred, even with living situations. There was this guy named David who lived in my garage for a while with the rest of the roommates. His name was David. Yes, just David. Your run of the mill name.

He ended up legally changing it it: Phaeton Praxidous Cu Roi.

He was a comic book writer who inhabited the bowels of our garage with his two ferrets.

Now he was writing a comic book about fecal bots, of which I have some copies, if anyone ever wants to read them. But he did not illustrate them.

Instead, he 'hired' this foreign guy to come live with him, when he was still living on his own, and draw for him for room and board. David kept this guy shut up in the house until he finished his drawings. This dude was so freaked out by him that he ended up pissing in jars around the room and hiding them, because he was afraid to leave the room to use the bathroom. So, when he finally moved out, the room was full of jars of piss. Like some goddamn science fermentation experiment.

Gross, I know. But to understand the level of psychotic behavior, it must be told.

On a lighter, less gross note, recently, I had the pleasure of being stuck at some dude's house that was trying to seduce me. Haha. This is what happened. After drinking some white russians, mmmm delicious.... he hands me his journal. Let me paint this a little better:

We will call him J.

J: (handing me his journal) "Here, read this."

ME: "What is it?"

J: "My journal. I want you to read it."

ME: "Uh....okay......"

(After sighing to myself at the almost expected self-obsessed nature of most guys who are "artists" I open to a page and begin to "read" silently to myself.)

J: "No." J almost whispers and he pulls down the book in front of me. "I want you to read it out loud."

ME: "You want ME to read YOUR journal to YOU out loud?"

J: "Yes."

ME: sigh. "Okay." I clear my throat and being to read with the vigor and zest that any well trained theatre actor would. "In the darkness, we are entwined, but in the daylight, there is none."

(I look at him.)

ME: "There is none?"

J: while is eyes are closed and he is nodding. "Yes! Keep going!"

ME:"Oooookay.......there is none. We are two vines that seek the light, like the sun seeks the moon......" I look over at him and see him mouthing the words along with me. Jesus, if this is the first time I met him, I can't wait to see what the second time is like. We will probably end up cutting ourselves together while listening to some hipster band that no one has ever heard of......"we shall be together, until the darkness has descended..... so, what was that about?"

J: "The poem?"

ME: "Yes.... the poem......"

J: "I wrote it about my ex."

ME: "Okay, so you make me read YOUR journal out loud to YOU about poems that you wrote about your EX?"

J: "Yes."

ME: "Jesus Christ."

Some people don't have so much of an emotional weirdness as they do a physical one. This one friend of ours use to have terrible verbal outbursts. And it was odd, because it was not like turrets where he would outbust random things. But just a huge increase in volume. Like sitting in a restaurant and, (we will call him Frank), and Frank saying,: "Uh, yes, I would like to order the cheeseburger with nO FRIES AND COLESLAW INSTEAD PLEASE!" From 0 to 60 in no time at all.

And the weird thing was, was that he didn't even seem to notice. When talking to the girl he was dating he would say, "You know, I really do liKE YOU A LOT! Do you want to haNG OUT SOME MORE LATER TONIGHT?!"

To make matters worse, sometimes his gestures and arm movements would increase, so he would almost resemble a malfunctioning robot who is on the fritz. You had to like duck to avoid being hit by the massive arms.

It was hard to take him out places. That's why we chose quiet venues like the movies.

I'm telling you, like catnip for tards. A beacon or something that apparently I emit. Well, at least it keeps my life interesting, and gives me good ideas for characters.