Lunatics

This friend I used to have a long time ago made up this term "Looney magnet", which is a regular person like you or I, who, in their various everyday outings by no fault of their own, attract - for lack of a better word - the 'looneys'. Looneys can vary from mildly chatty old ladies to full blown raving lunatics. I am a loony magnet! At times I enjoy it, crazy old ladies are occasionally interesting, strange people who divulge information about their Marilyn Monroe collection are sweet, but ever so often I get the loony that I do struggle to deal with.

For example, today, a lady plopped herself down right next to me on an empty bus and proceeded to ask me no less than 50 times if the Police or 'funny people' are going to be in Box Hill, and if she should go there. I reassured her that she would be okay many times until she convinced herself that it's not safe and got off the bus. I silently breathed a sigh of relief. Another time waiting for a tram an old lady wearing stark white gloves approached me and asked me to tell her if her skirt collar was covering her face, and she proceeded to pull it over her mouth obsessively a thousand times, each time waiting for my answer. The tram came and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Looneys like me, they want to be my friend, I am trustworthy or something. I think the truth is I kind of like them, too, or what they stand for or something. They flout everything that is proper about human interaction and I kind of like how they totally unknowingly make people uncomfortable, including me. They're usually loud or angry or interestingly dressed and they're just doing it without the complexities of reason or manners or fashion. I always think that when I'm old I'll most likely lose my mind and become one of the looneys, nonsensical but honest, talking to people who look like one day they'll be 'one of us'.