Just Your Local Friendly Conspiracy Theorist

*sigh*

Can someone please tell me why I seem to be the magnet for the compos mentis-challenged?

So I go to lunch with my BFF to our favorite local organic health-food store/deli. Eating there is très expensive but the food is so delish and such a feast for the palate that every two weeks we treat ourselves. I look forward to these little jaunts - to get away for an hour or so to nourish the body with good food and relax and laugh and enjoy the simple pleasures of life.

I order my food and sit down to wait for my BFF to join. She makes eye contact with the man sitting one seat away from me and smiles and says hello.

*sigh* Why did she do that? Here we go.

I close my eyes and wait for the shoe to drop. I don’t have such a good track record when it comes to meeting strangers or befriending them. For some reason they always seem to have a bit of a problem in the psychological/mental areas of their lives. And so I’ve learned to walk the highway of life with blinders on, minding my own business, doing my own thing and so far so good. Anytime I venture forth and decide I’m going to charm my way into a circle of friendship, well, I tend to meet those that have been given a free day pass out of their mental institutions.

And this guy was no exception.

And he begins his one-man show by informing me that my sparkling water is nothing less than tap water. And I paid for it. "Yes, I know," I respond, "but I wanted some fizz." Is that alright with you is what I felt like adding.

But didn't.

Well, that fizz must've gone straight to my head and blacked me out cause next thing I know I'm smack in the middle of a conversation of why the H1N1 vaccine is the government’s way of depopulating the human race. “If you have kids don’t let them get the vaccine cause it'll kill 'em. Tell them you don't want to vaccinate your child based on religious grounds. You have to protect them or they’re going to die. The government is trying to get rid of us. One minute you're robust with health, the next you're either very sick or dead." I look for my friend and ponder saving the government the trouble of exterminating her and just do it myself.

The conversation then segues into pop culture and how he hates Lady Caca and he doesn’t get it. Maybe it’s because it’s Lady Gaga for starters, I don’t know, just throwing it out there. I just nod my head, continue eating, saying as little possible trying to bring this conversation to an end, no such luck. He informs me that that's why this generation is so stupid because all they do is listen to Lady Caca on MTV and so their intelligence quotient has already dropped about 20% because of this.

Just for the hell of it I ask him if he likes Eminem because I believe his new album should have been named Tourette's instead of Recovery because it's just one curse word after another and you couldn't recover one single profanity-free verse in all of those tracks if you tried. But then again, I add, if his point was to recover some non-curse words out of his Tourette's fits of anger and hate, then yeah, maybe the title of his new album was apropos.

"Huh?" Good. I had short-circuited his brain. My job was done. Now maybe he'd finally shut up and leave me alone.

Oh, but tsk, tsk, tsk, silly girl, how very naive you are. He continues, “And I don’t like Elvis either.” Dammit, he fucking engaged me, “You don’t like Elvis?”

He laughs, “No! Him and that hunka, hunka whatever.”

I roll my eyes. Idiot. What does he know. Elvis baby was definitely one hunka, hunka burning love, him with his orgasmic gyrations, pre-michelin period, of course.

“So what kind of music do you like,” I had to ask. Just had to.

“Heavy metal.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Yeah, but about 90% of the heavy metal out there is really bad and it’s that 10% that you have to find that is really good.”

Good. Then can someone give me a really good piece of heavy metal to knock this guy out?

Then the conversation segues back to me and whether I have children. Finally I had to tell him thinking maybe this would stop his verbal marathon, “I no longer have children at home. My kid’s 31.”

He looked at me like he had just hit a wall, “Huh? Wait, you’re 31, is that what you said?”

“No, my kid’s 31.”

“No way! When did you have her? Were you 12 or something?”

I couldn’t resist, “Actually 11.”

He laughs at my snarky reply and tells me I must have great genes and starts naming some countries where I could be from. And it appeared he didn't plan to stop until he hit a country. So to finally put an end to it I inform him I'm a mutt and come from both English and Spanish blood. And there he goes..... “No way! I find English people so smart! They’re like 20% smarter!” There goes that 20% again.

“Really?” I say. “Then I owe that extra 20% of my brain power to my English genes then, huh?”

And before he could go off on another tangent my soon-to-be-dead BFF returns and my face tells it all; she finesses the conversation away from our friendly, local conspiracy theorist with such ease that it was something that this 20 percentile intelligent EngSpa couldn’t do in the five minutes she was held hostage by the barrage of disconnected thoughts.

*sigh*

Moral of the story: Do not befriend, especially if you’re lacking in that 20%.

For Write on Edge