Waiting for Someone to Come Out of Somewhere...

Previously, in this post, I discussed seeing a homeless woman near the store where I work this morning, who told me, and I quote:

"There's a mannequin on a TV without a head."

That was the whole point of that post, really...That a homeless person had said something odd to me. I wrote it whilst in the back room at Laser Blazer, so I didn't take a lot of time to really analyze the quote or anything. I just thought it would be kind of a funny thing to throw out there.

But then, on my way out of the store tonight, I passed by the same homeless woman in the same spot. This time, she didn't say anything to me, or even my eye contact. I figured she's probably a schizophrenic, unable to work or maintain a normal life because of her unstable, delusional condition but also occasionally capable of acting sane. Or maybe she's just an addict who blurts out non-sequiteurs to strangers when high.

I have no way of knowing. I guess if I were a tremendously generous, public-spirited citizen, I would just sit by her and start asking her these things, to determine if there was any way I could help her, say, by buying her some soup or insisting to her that there are, despite her protestations, no headless mannequins on the TV, and even if there were, it wouldn't really be a big deal.

After all, they're just mannequins. The heads come off easily and are replacable.

Unfortuantely for this homeless lady, I am not a generous, public-spirited citizen but, instead, a misanthropic crank. Plus, my apartment is already so crammed tight with roommates, visitors and friends crashing on various couches, I'm afraid there's simply no room for any more slovenly transients. We're all full up here.

I think the thing that got to me about this woman today was the fact that she was sitting in the same spot for my full 8.5 hour shift. She was there when I arrived, there when I took my half-hour lunch break, and there again as I returned to my car to go home. During the day today, I was bored several times, and I had a ton of stuff to keep me occupied!

I can't imagine sitting (mostly) quietly on an uncomfortable plastic chair on the sidewalk for 8.5 hours. If she wasn't insane when she got there, she surely will be once she leaves.

Then, once I got to the parking lot, I saw the shirtless guy who lives in his red van back there. He was barbecuing.

I'll say that again, because it's so ludicrous. There's a guy who hangs out all day in his van, where he lives, fat and frequently shirtless, in a parking lot. (He even has a little TV with little rabbit ears set up in the van). Today, he was outside of his van with a hibachi, barbecuing chicken.

So here's another guy who's just hanging out in a commercial area all day on the street. Yes, he has a van to sleep in and get around town (though he's almost always there) and a little TV to watch, but the stillness and boredom and isolation must get horribly intense.

I'm not quite sure what point I had when I started this rambling post. I think I wanted to say something about how, no matter how drab your life feels, someone is even more hopelessly lost and frustrated. Or maybe something about how everyone's path through life is so unpredictable and different, and how frightening it is to think about how far it's possible to fade away without disappearing altogether. Whatever it is, it was going to be extremely enlightening.