Heh. You shoulda heard my old man. He used to fake a Nigerian accent sometimes, just to see if he could get away with it.

My mom would be sure to be far away when he did that.

It's a good story, goober.

Heh. Great story! I can't remember any right now, but my husband has great story about a spontaneous monologue from some guy in a bar telling him all about his trip to "PepsiCola, Florida" (Pensacola), where they never saw a black man, or something... which he ended with, "Hey, y'all don't panic! - I'm just a nigger mechanic!"

Wish I could remember all the in-between... This guy should've been a performer.

taz, that reminds me of a snippet of a Lorrie Moore story [YOU MUST ALL READ HER I HAVE SPOKEN].

Lorrie Moore, whom I love so much.

It's a poem within a story:

Oh, the ladies come down from the Pepsi Hotel
their home has no other name
than the sign that was placed
like a big cola bell: Pepsi-Cola Have a Pepsi Hotel

They come down to the truckers
or the truckers go up
to the rooms with the curtains pell-mell.
They truck down for the fuckers
or else they go up
in the Pepsi Have a Pepsi Hotel.

Oh, honey, they sigh; oh, honey, they say,
there are small things to give and to sell,
and Heaven's among us
so work can be play
at the Pepsi Have a Pepsi Hotel.

A friend swears that he was walking through town one day and overtook two early-20s girls: as he drew level with them, he caught the end of their conversation. Girl A turns to Girl B and says, with feeling:

"So, of course, she can never eat oranges again."

Girl B emphatically replies: "Of course!"

This happened over three years ago. In quieter moments, we still like to speculate as to what caused Girl A's friend to become so orangephobic.

A man on a bus once told me I was immortal. He also kept going on and on about how Ariel Sharon was going to hell because he tortured Palestinians "24 hours a day", in a really loud voice too, in French (that was in Quebec City). Now that happened around 1990.

The funny thing is he seemed to be there with a wife/girlfriend/date. I felt a bit sorry for her, but she never told him to be quiet or anything like that. Maybe she was deaf.

Excellent story, trondant.

This is precisely why I carry a digital voice recorder with me at all times.

I was on a subway once in Toronto. I was with my friend, Fudge Roberts. There was a "crazy" Jamaican woman on the car and she kept repeating "Ya nasty bahstad!" over and over again. She also was berating an asian woman about "slant eyes".

She sees me and my friend and she comes over to the empty seat. She sits. She starts to talk to Fudge and all of a sudden the loony is gone from her voice, at least in tone:

"You look like you would work. Ya know, for me. Work real well for me. Ya know? Sometimes it's too hard and ya need someone to just work witcha, ya know? Things ain't right--when things ain't right I need someone just like you--someone just like you to smooth it all around and help me out the other side. What's your name? I only ask 'cause you look like you could work real nice for me. Not today, no. Not today, no. Not today, no; today I'm fine. But sometime. Sometime, sometime, ya know. You know what I mean? When things need smoothing and my hands only know how to knead... You could be my smoother. I could be yours, too, but I'm no good at it. I'm a kneader. What's your name?"

She pulled out a pen and a small, cheap notepad with spiral binding on the top. She flipped it open about halfway. There were all kinds of notes and names written all over it--some crossed out and some not. I remember each entry looked like it was written in a different hand.

And she paused and stared at Fudge and he was terrified because he himself often needed a smoother and he never knew how to ask. This woman knew how to ask.

"What's your name, smoother?"

"John," Fudge lied.

She wrote it down.

"Now, I'm gonna call on you when it's bad, John. About an eight, that's about what I think you could smooth--an eight. That's how highly I thinks of ya! An eight--the only one in my book! Thank you, John."

And she got off the train.

To this day, Fudge regrets lying to that woman and, as someone who's known him 15 years, I can say that that encounter was a defining moment of his character. The few minutes that woman spent with him changed him.

For a few years, after I'd be walking down Bloor or Bathurst or on a subway or streetcar and I'd hear the woman cry, "Ya nasty bahstad!" and I'd look over and she'd be sitting or standing holding a pole and repeating that phrase over and over to whoever it was she imagined she was cursing out--whoever it was that was unsmoothing her life.

I haven't heard her voice in probably 5 years and I imagine she's passed on, but damn did that woman's voice calm me. As much as Fudge regrets lying, I'm jealous she didn't see anything in me.

dobbs, exactly how did that change your friend? That's fascinating.

As I reread my entry, I think maybe I got the rhythm of her speech wrong. When she talked to Fudge she talked slowly. Think of the Oracle in The Matrix and you'll be about right on the speed.

Miko, he was a very pompous and private person. I think that encounter--and lying to her and seeing how genuinely delighted she was to have his name in her book--was the first time he saw how he could affect the life of a stranger. I suppose that he imagined that in this woman's mind when she called on him, reading from the notebook, that, when the calling didn't work to smooth out her problems, it would be because she wasn't calling the right name. He regrets that the first time a stranger truly reached out for him he decieved her, and, I imagine, based on his behavior since, that he realized that strangers are sometimes the only friends some people have and that, as one of those friends, we all have an obligation to be true.

A few years later he and I were in a grocery store and a woman was freaking out at the counter. She wanted a magazine from the previous month and of course they only had the current issue. She was screaming at the cashier. Prior to the encounter mentioned above, my friend's reaction woulda been to walk away and probably tell people about the crazy lady at the store. Instead, he walked up to her in a very calm voice and said (I forget exactly), "How can I make this right?" (Fudge did not work at the store.). The woman immediately calmed down and started explaining that she needed the previous issue of the magazine and that they had gotten rid of them when the new one came out. She also explained how she knew it wasn't their fault and she should have bought it when she saw it there before. They talked for a few more seconds and the woman went away calmly.

Had I not witnessed the above I probably would think, as many of my other friends do, that believing what I wrote in the first paragraph is giving Fudge too much credit.

At the risk of totally derailing, that's very interesting, dobbs. In folklore and related disciplines, people sometimes study the 'crazy' people to theorize about what they are providing for the culture as a whole. These are all interesting examples. Can they make us more compassionate? Can they make us laugh and take ourselves less seriously? By breaking through the usual walls we keep around ourselves, do they wake us up to our responsibilities to others?

Coincidentally, I caught the John Cleese "Village Idiot" sketch on the Flying Circus the other night, which lampoons this exact idea.

Anyway, lovely stories. Thanks. I once saw a folksinger (Catie Curtis) do a little between-song patter all about the local 'characters' everyone has in their towns. It was interesting; she mentioned one character, but everyone in the audience was smilingly thinking of their own local characters.

For those who don't know about it, here is overheardinnewyork.

When I first found it, I read straight through the archives.

Miko, these lectures (linked from the green art Q yesterday) speak to exactly what you're talking about.

Thanks Sticky, I immediately added that to my favorites without even reading anything!

On the bus in Berkelely, late seventies:

Two men are medical students and talking about the profession. A tiny old bag lady gets on the bus. Her feet dangle when she sits down. She stares at the students for a few moments, then announces very loudly (in a New York accent): “I’m well! Don’t take me to no hospital, I’m well! Hey lady! I’m well!” The lady she addresses nods and looks away. She yells about how well she is some more. Finally, the bus driver says “Lady. If you don’t quiet down you’re gonna have to get off the bus. I don’t want no trouble.”

She responds: “I don’t give ‘em no trouble! I just tell ‘em shuddap!” (Turns to back of bus.) “SHADDAP!”

This is all she has to say, and is quiet for the remainder of the ride.

True story in a seaside town. Kid in a supermarket uniform is watering plants outside. Busy summer day, all the summer people have arrived in their rented bungalows, down from the hot city to spend weeks or weekends "down the shore". Convertible pulls up, two college girls inside. They turn to the uniform clad employee and ask (seriously) "Excuse me, but could you tell me where the nearest supermarket is?" as patrons pass the car with loaded shopping carts.