Several months ago, my crazy upstairs neighbor moved away. Since then, things have been, frankly, far less crazy. Don't get me wrong, it's a good thing. In fact, it's a great thing. The new tenant is a pretty nice guy. He's an older gent who's renting the apartment while he's in town for some continuing education courses related to his job. In start contrast to the previous tenant, Batshit McCrazy, he's a friendly, "with-it" kind of guy. On numerous occasions, we had conversations outside. He's got a knack for remembering who the hell I am and what it is that I do. To top it off, he remembers Winning Run and a bit about her as well. I suppose that he's just a nice guy who enjoys conversation. Anyway, it's a nice change from the previous who, each time she met you, seemed happy to be meeting you for the first time.
Last week, on the eve of the President's Day weekend, I was packing my car to head to Seattle to see Winning Run. As I'm putting the last bag inside, I see him walking across the parking lot toward his apartment and say "hello." We begin to talk. After a short while, the conversation drifts toward current events and to the upheaval in Egypt and other countries in the vicinity.
"It's pretty crazy what's going on over there, right?," I asked.My favorite part of the conversation was how he looked at me like I was the crazy one for suggesting that the government, not aliens, were watching us. Priceless. And completely, utterly wacko.
"Yeah," he said. "It's a mess. We need to watch out."
"Tell me about it. Oil prices are going to go through the roof," I offered.
"Uh huh. We need to be aware of what we're doing; they're watching," he explained.
"Yeah, we use too much oil. I guess the government does need to watch out. We need to wean ourselves off of it, don't we?," I offered.
He looked a little puzzled. "Government? No, man, the UFOs are watching us."
[Silence.]
"Huh?," I asked, unsure of how we moved so quickly from unrest in the Middle East to extraterrestrial monitoring of our affairs.
"Yeah, they're out there," he exclaimed while pointed toward the horizon. "I seen 'em flying. I know planes and what I've seen are not planes."
"Okaaayyyy," I said while trying to put on my best poker face.
"It's started back in World War II when we built the bomb and brought all the Nazis over to work on the space program. We had the power of death, the bomb. They started watching."
"Really," I said, moving toward my door.
"I've got friends who work for nuclear power plants. Sometimes the guards will go outside and see their ships hovering outside. Sometimes they shut the plants down, just turn 'em off, to let us know they're watching us."
"Guess we'd better behave, then," I told him. I wished him and good evening and ducked into my living room. "Well, that got effing crazy really, really fast," I said to the emptiness.
Long live Batshit Crazy McGillicutty..
Posts
