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who or what is the weirdest person you have known

43 by FMajcinek_Archive
Angus Jung wrote:My older brother works at Wal-Mart.


There is some debate with regard to the conclusiveness of the diagnoses he has received, but I believe he suffers from Asperger's Syndrome.



This is strange.

My ex's sister has Asperger's Syndrome. She also works at Wal-Mart. One "weird" and remarkable feature of her Syndrome is her obsession:

She is obsessed with magic. Card tricks, dissapearing coins, cup-and-ball routines, the works. She studies these things with a zeal that borders on mania. This is to say: she absolutely cannot talk about anything else. I have known this girl for a decade now. We have never had a conversation about anything but magic.

The really great thing about her magic is how she performs her tricks: by the fucking book. There is no patter. There are no jokes. There is no air of self-deprecating confidence or condescending banter. She is just incapable of it. In fact, she doesn't even appear to enjoy it. Her tricks are just these flawlessly excecuted slights. That coin is just gone, that scrap of paper has your name on it.

The first time I met her, she spread a deck of cards. She was maybe 12 years old.

"Pick one, " she said.

I did. It was the Queen of Spades.

"Now put it back."

I did.

"Now shuffle," she said.

I shuffled and cut the cards. She took them back.

"Lift the card on the top."

I did. It's face was not a card, but a note. It read: "Your breast pocket." In my pocket was the Queen of Spades.

"Is that your card?" she asked, liked she really wanted to know.

I nearly left the room, I was so amazed. I felt blessed and violated at the same time--like someone broke into my house to leave a hundred dollar bill on my coffee table.

But she didn't move. Not once. Never even looked at me. Her eyes were glassy and absent. Her voice constant and affectless. Like she was reading a tech manual. She betrayed neither delight nor malice. My enjoyment of her performance was not important to her.

It is still the strangest encounter I've ever had with a human being. She's performed scores of tricks for me since then, and I've never once felt that I was being entertained or performed for. I was watching alchemy, transmorgrification. Things would dissapear and re-appear elsewhere. Things were changed.

I never caught her, and I think I would be miserable if I had. Her mother told me that she practices her magic eight to ten hours a day. That she sometimes doesn't sleep. I have learned that, because of her disease, magic is the only way she can engage the world. And she can only engage it by manipulating it, changing it, earning mastery over this world's objects through Job-like patience and constant repetition. It's her gift. I'm glad she has it.

I don't know what any of this has to do with Wal-Mart.

who or what is the weirdest person you have known

49 by nicholas_Archive
So I'm heading to the subway at Columbus Circle one night, the stop at the Time Warner Center that has the spiffy escalators, when I see him.

He looks like he's somewhere past 50, yet still physically able. I mean, there's a chance he could have been around 45, and just looked older, sure, but for descriptive purposes, let's say he was around 55. He wasn't fat, at least compared to a lot of people, but the guy had a gut. In my mind at least he was wearing a plaid shirt. Red plaid. If he wasn't, he gave the impression that he wore red plaid on a regular basis. A lumberjack look. His long graying beard reinforced this, sure, but it also adding a related "Santa Claus" dimension.

At his feet was a chrome ghetto blaster turned up until the speakers were distorting from the music. And what music? Bonnie Raitt's "Something to Talk About" at ghetto blaster distorting levels. Bonnie Raitt, whose homely red-headed visage was immediately forefront in my mind, a visage which complemented the red-plaid wearing lumberjack santa claus before me in the same wonderful/terrible way a well-coordinated motel painting complements the filthy blankets on a motel bed.

This man was dancing the robot to Bonnie Rait's "Something to Talk About."

It was one of the strangest, most wonderful sights I have seen since moving to New York.

Soon, he began pointing at passersby and thrusting his hips. Bonnie Rait was winding the song down. I ducked down the escalator and rode the A train to the end of the line, up to Inwood.
"It was not a significant bullet."
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