Hark! A Merry is coming…

02 Out of Our Minds

Ms. Robin Deeslie and I were on a mission to the death closet this afternoon to pick up some old files so the archivist from special collections could come see if they were worthy of a home on the sixth floor.  (She decided to give homes to all of them).  We danced down the empty hallway.  I did a pretty good bird/dinosaur impression and Robin has some great high kicks and torso leans.  As we approached the elevator and overly tan, weathered gentlemen said in the most flaming homosexual redneck voice, “Going down laaaadies?”  We eyed his box of old telephones and Robin politely told him, “We’ll take the next one.”  Then she looked at me, and I had to mock him.  And we laughed so hard we forgot to press the elevator button.  Once we actually got on the elevator this strange woman in a pink, stretchy, onsie outfit (it was actually two pieces, but I thought it was a body suit at first) smelled strange and asked us, “Are you moving?”   Robin told me, “Merry, I think it’s you.  You attract the crazies.  And we all know she is right.  My existence is like a giant blinking arrow.  Are you insane? Do you believe in pet yoga?  Are you wearing two different shoes because you are homeless or are you making a statement?  Are you a Freegan? (they eat food out of dumpsters)

Crazy finds me on a daily basis and This and more comes to me on a daily basis and I thought, is it my body language?  Can they smell me coming from a mile away?  Or do I somehow give off a dog whistle sound that only eccentric people can hear?  I’ve written about my favorite crazy person, Roger Lair, but I think that I need to step in my time machine and take you to a movie theatre where I caught the crazy bug.

When I was sixteen I worked at a dollar theatre in Wells Branch that burned down and is now a Walgreens.  It was my first job, and on my first day one of the six managers told me “Go get out the hot dogs.”  So I opened the freezer and discovered these green disturbing meat chunks.  I said “I think these have expired.”  He said, “Ya, I know, we sell them until we run out.”  Horrified, I put the weenies on their weenie wheels and watched them glisten.  When I worked box office, he told me “My wife will call, tell her I’m not here.”  And everyday she would call insisting that she knew he was there, and then she would yell at me for 20 minutes.  He was usually in his lover’s car in the parking lot getting frisky.  He was a classy guy.  Manager number 2 was a big time stoner who had the hots for me.  His opening line was “You know, I can eat 60 chicken nuggets when I’m high.”  I was like ew, but I said cool…He wanted me to call him, but he said he didn’t have a phone.  I mean he only made $7 an hour so that is believeable.  He also had a wife.  But that didn’t stop him from telling me I didn’t have to help close if I wanted to go up to his office.

Then there were the lady managers.  One of them was a short, Jewish, chain smoking, bleached out blond.  She was always ALWAYS smoking.  I saw her go through 3 packs in 6 hours.  She was always shakey and would yell at everyone.  Her one noble deed was to make the creepy men go away.  When I worked box office, these single, lonely men would come up and just start talking to me.  Not about sexual stuff, just about their day, the weather, and then they would ask me to read them the movie list.  It weirded me out at first but then I just got sad and thought, please never let me get this lonely.  But smokerella, would shoo them away.  And then, the craziest manager of all….she was psychic.  She ran into the tiny box area and said “Merry!  Look at my leg!  My boyfriend stabbed me!”  Sure enough there was a knife wound from her knee down to her ankle.  I was like oh my God, you have to see a doctor and call the police…then she added he stabbed her from the grave…yes the grave.  Ohhh dear.  After that, she told me that she felt my spirit in her car on the way to work and knew we were psychic sisters.  I wonder if she can feel me typing this now…

And of course all of my co-workers were strange.  There was the drag queen on hormone therapy who really needed more estrogen.  She lost a nail in the popcorn once, and yes, we served it anyway.  Then there was the Hispanic woman who made me eat her stew.  She told me “I have a daughter you age” and she was 28.  I told her I was 16, and she said “Ya, I know.”  Oh my!  Her biggest complaint was that this whore was hitting on her husband at some construction site.  She talked about it everyday, and then one day, the lady came in to the movie theatre.  I should add it was half price kid day and the lobby was full of children there to see Trumpet of the Swan.  Well, my co-worker jumped over the counter and yelled “Bitch I will cut you up.  I’ll kill you!”  It was a knockout of a fight.  Children were crying, parents were complaining, and earlobes were ripped.  She got fired, and I missed eating her stew.  It was quite delicious.

One fellow told me he had been kicked out of high school, and this was shocking since we had worked together several days at concessions and he had refused to speak to me.  I was like ohhh?  And he continued to tell me he had lunged at another student with a knife and they fell out a window.  But he assured me that he would never stab me.  Great news!  Most everyone I worked with smoked some kind of drug in the projection booth.  Once, they were high and kicked over the projector and it caught fire.  A few scenes were missing from Oh Brother Where Art Thou, but we showed it anyway and no one ever complained.

I think I was exposed to so much crazy that I can never really shake it off.  Of course, I grew up in an eccentric family, so perhaps I am being directed towards my own kind.  I do laugh like a rabid hyena on speed and I dressed my cat up for a photoshoot.  Perhaps the most comforting thing is that if I am the leader of the crazy pack, I’ll always have a smile around the corner.