(type: bizarre ... a first person account)

Ed: Although I don't feel like any of my own life stories are as remarkable as most of the ones I've been posting here, I decided it would be silly for the creator of a story-based site not to include a story of his own.

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I had an encounter with a special kind of freak not long after I first set foot in California. I had finished doing some shopping one day in San Mateo and was waiting at the bus stop when I saw a man exit a building across the street with a large radio slung on his shoulder, yelling back at the building as he walked. Now, keep in mind that this is broad daylight on a fairly hot, sunny day, at a large intersection. The man had spiked red hair and was dressed in a black leather jacket, black jeans and white high-tops. His radio was blaring the Eagles. He wandered a few feet to the right, paused for a minute in indecision, then started back the other way, heading toward the intersection, where he waited for the light to change. "This is not a good sign," I said to myself.

He started to cross the street. Oh, no. The intersection was filled with, "Welcome to the Ho-tel Cal-iforn-ia..." Please God, don't let that asshole sit down here. But indeed, he stepped onto the sidewalk, turned toward me, walked over and (oblivious to the fact that anyone else was present) sat down, radio in his lap. I stared straight ahead.

To suggest that this person was hopped up on something would be to suggest that water is wet. He was sweaty, shaking and behaviorally incoherent. He fiddled with the tuner, trying to find a station he preferred, but the volume was on max, so I was treated to a lovely barrage of full-bore static in between radio chatter. Finally he found a station he liked: the same station. Must have been a marathon, because now they were playing, "New Kid in Town." This drugged-up, red-headed punker dressed in black I-don't-give-a-shit garb apparently loved his soft-rock ballads from the 70's so much that he had to crank that volume to the max. In fact, he loved it so much that after a couple of minutes of staring into space, he was compelled to stick his fist in the air and scream, "RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" I swear I'm not making this up. I, of course, was doing my best during all of this to sit perfectly still and hope that he didn't grab my neck and tell me to make the dancing zebras go away.

It was apparently then time for a nap. Further evidence of his being unaware of my presence was the fact that, despite our bench being plenty long, he laid down in my direction. The paper cup that I had been drinking lemonade from earlier still sat beside me, and his head happened to come down right on top of it. He tried to lay his head down a couple of times, not comprehending why something was poking at the side of his head, then turned, saw the cup and knocked it to the ground. I managed to scoot over a little bit just before his head leaned against my hip. *shudder*

Finally, the bus came, and fortunately for everyone on it, Freak Show Red did not need a lift. I looked around a bit for some recognition of my torment, but of course no one on the bus could have known what the nut-job on the bench had been doing for the past ten minutes. Oh well. At least it was over.