you can't make this shit up

[rm]

I just had one of those experiences with a severely mentally ill person that was both not a big deal and completely disturbing to me, mainly because I'm just crazy enough to see the patterns with which other people's crazy appears to intersect with my own.

I was in the laundromat finishing up. Usually at this hour they lock it because there are only one or two customers left (they close at 10:30), but there were some young boys in there playing and I guess the manager knew them and it was annoying to keep locking and unlocking the door after them and let it go.

A man came in, who initially just seemed very drunk to me and may well have been drunk also, but I could eventually tell from his body language and periodic grunting sounds that there was probably a mental helath issue going on there. Okay fine. Considering some of the stuff one deals with in this neighborhood and in NY as a whole, that's not a huge deal.

He didn't seem very clean, but he also didn't smell. But he kept hovering behind me. I didn't want to yell at him if I didn't have to because no one needs that, but I was going to (and then some) if he touched me or my laundry.

"That's going to hurt our boys," he said to me abruptly.

"What?" I asked, going for irritated and confused.

"Our boys won't be able to make any money if they start importing products from Germany."

"Germany? What?"

"When our boys come home."

"When our boys come home from where?"

"The war."

"You mean Iraq?"

"No. Germany. We shouldn't have products from Germany."

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said, feeling like a liar.

"It wss on the TV!" he pointed.

The only thing on the TV was a shitty new Twliight Zone episode about virtual reality sex software.

"Sorry, I can't help you," I said, and he wandered off to sit on the bench near where I was folding and then preiodically grunted until someone else came in and he started again about "Our boys" and I had to get out of there before I hyperventilated with the What the FUCK?

Hi, y'all.

Comments

[eac.livejournal.com]

That's awfully Torchwood-y. Rest assured, time seems intact over here. (I'm only mostly joking.)

[weirdodragoncat.livejournal.com]

Oh..dear...how sad to be trapped in a time loop in your own mind like that. *shudder* I fear ever ending up like that.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Things like this happen to me ALL THE TIME. On different themes, but without fail mentally ill strangers will come up to me and monologue on something with some tangental connection to something in my mental existence and it will freak me right the fuck out.

I've had crazy people attack me with umbrellas because there were apparently creepy things on my shoulders; dudes tell me they would kill themselves to touch me and folks telling me I was executed as a nin-year-old witch in Salem (there were no nine-year-olds executed in Salem). Patty and I first met under weird crazy person circustances, although that dude seemed less mentally ill and moreperformance artist, but that went on for hours and eventually went from slightly weird to batshit crazy when I jokingly offered to stab him in her defense and he asked me if he'd be real then (a line from a novel he'd never even heard of but was the source of Patty's and I initial contact).

But dude, not with the Germany shit when I'm doing laundry. Please.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

It not a simple time loop, because there's tv. And I doubt if he's old enough to remember WWII. So it's more complex the that.
Somehow.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Right. He didn't look older than 60, might have been younger. I figure it's TV or smething he remembers a parent or older relative talking about when he was a child.

[weirdodragoncat.livejournal.com]

still...anyway one looks at it...its sad.

"No. Germany. We shouldn't have products from Germany."

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Only having had quite limited predominately rural Western Canadian, and relatively limited Torontonian, non functional crazy, I lack your perspective.
I would have completely freaked out when he said that.

Re: "No. Germany. We shouldn't have products from Germany."

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Fuck you, spellcheck, Torontonian is too a word!

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Maybe. It's terrifying and sad, whatever his personal hell consists of.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Yes.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Hell is the wrong word. Hell implies that you deserve to be there, and I'm pretty sure that no one deserves that, and almost certainly not him.

Test run.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Chicagoan, Parisian, Londoner, Haligonian , Muscovite, Liverpudlian.

Apparently Torontonian and Haligonian are the only mysteries.

You can't make this shit up.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

If you tried to make stuff like that up, you wouldn't be believable.
Proof that this isn't the Matrix!

Re: You can't make this shit up.

[gement.livejournal.com]

Glitch in the system. Ghost damage. *shrug* It'll get patched soon, or they'll flush that unit.

I think I'd rather stick with the Torchwood interpretation, personally.

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

Very very Torchwood. I, for one, am pretty convinced I've seen Time Travelers about in my lifetime.

When we meet, remind me to tell you about the Guy with the Glasses.

N.

[dskasak.livejournal.com]

Did this guy look like the Major from "Fawlty Towers," by chance?

[imaginarycircus.livejournal.com]

CREEPY! D:

God I remember a dirty guy grabbing me when I was 8 in the subway and telling me he'd poisoned all the orange juice. I was holding a carton of orange juice with a straw in it. I threw up before we got home and was convinced I'd been poisoned.

Re: You can't make this shit up.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Dude! If they pulled that stuff, entire crops would be lost!

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

I'm waiting to see someone in a bag lady outfit driving someone in a chauffeur uniform, in the wrong kind of vehicle.
"Sure, they know about us, but they don't really get us."

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

I'd still be catatonic and rocking in the corner of the room if that had happened to me.