Friday, July 29, 2005

Crazies

So lately it seems like i have some kind of homing device for crazy people on the el. Yesterday on the blue line this guy leaned over to me and said "do you have a computer?"

At first I thought maybe he was some lurker at worth and recognised me, so I said "...yes". Then he said, "do you have the internet?" so i said "...yes", and waited for that glorious moment, that is the impromtu internet meet, to begin.

Only then it all flipped on its head when he said, "Have you ever checked out the hubble space telescope website?" I told him no and he spent the next few minutes spouting off facts about the telescope, then about a launch into space that apparently had occured that morning, then about planets in general. All these facts involved lots of numbers, $100,000 here, and 576,000 miles there etc. Then suddenly he drops the big one, "and you know there's 47 confirmed alien races in neighbouring solar systems. The government knows about them, the police knows about them... they just dont want you to know."

0_0 ... "heh...yeah."

And he goes on, "People think I'm crazy you know, people think I'm crazy... but that's just because they're stupid"

No dude. I don't think that's really why it is.

I didn't think anything'd top that one for a little while, but I was wrong. Today on the green line, a couple of stops before mine, this guy gets on holding a big, black, plastic elephant. It was about a foot high I guess.

At this point I didn't know about the craziness and I was in a pretty good mood so i was contemplating a friendly "hey, nice elephant" but didn't get a chance to say it before he starts giggling uncontrolably to himself. He then holds the elephant up to the window, and starts talking to it like it was a child "heyyy what can you see huh? Can you see out of the window hmmm?"

I. shit. you. not.

Then he starts whispering jibberish in its ear, pausing only to giggle hysterically again. (Seriously, happiest crazy person ever.) A little before my stop, he started laughing and looking at me, like the two of us were sharing a joke. Then he whispered in the elephant's ear again, looked at me, and said "It's a radio you know, I'm transmitting back to headquarters."

The scariest thing about all this is that I was walking home from the el and thinking about how I must have some kind of crazy person catnip going on, when i thought to myself "Hah! Or maybe they weren't crazy and that second guy is really an alien sending messages back to his planet, and the first guy knew all about it"

Only, then I think that makes me the crazy person, which could kind of explain it all.