Insanity and Underpants

So there we were, it was a dark and stormy night. Meanwhile, back at the ranch. Actually it was light and sunny and we were doing laundry at a truck stop but that’s not the point.

The point is that there are some seriously crazy people in the world. We spent an hour with their leader in the laundry room.

We meet lots of truckers that say crazy things or talk just to hear themselves talk. These guys will just walk into a room and start talking to no one in particular, fishing for conversation.

Well, conversation is the wrong word, what they are looking for really is a set of ears with feet. These guys have been in the truck too long alone and are desperate for human contact.

The fella doing his laundry at the same time we were, he was more than just lonely, he was stone cold crazy.

It all began innocently enough.

He asked if we knew today was the anniversary of Sept. 11.

I said, "Uh, today is the 12th."  He looked blank for a moment.

Then came the story.*

See what happened was, that he, CrazyMan, used to live in Houston. He found out about a bad cop down there who liked to play with people’s bones. Did it all the time. CrazyMan saw him bash in a man’s skull and play with the pieces and when he tried to tell the authorities about it they blew him off. Word got out to the bad cop so he tried to set CrazyMan up on fake rape charges. See, CrazyMan lived in Washington DC during Watergate and his dad started the National Organization of Women as a fraternal order so they could buy government bonds and shelter the money. He went into a Catholic church there and the crucifix was upside down, so he knew it was a satanic cult because it happened back in Houston when he was nine. In fact, when he was nine he delivered newspapers to George Bush Jr and bought pot from him, are you following this so far? He asked us sincerely if we could follow along.  Himself, ever the gentlemen said "a little, there’s so many details." I said, "Dude, seriously, you have got to be kidding."

No. In fact he was not.

He recapped the story for us, so we could better follow along.

See, he bought pot from George Bush when he was nine and then Bush became governor and CrazyMan’s dad founded NOW (National Organization for Women) and satan worshipers were everywhere and he found out that George Bush and Bill Clinton were second step cousins and that right there is fratricide but only he and his family knew it.

Well then, along comes this bad cop who tried to set him up on a rape charge but it turns out the woman was a hermaphrodite and had a penis. So see he couldn’t have raped her.

Well this was in 1998 and he knew that the World Trade Centers were going to be bombed by the fraternal order of the National Organization of Women and all the bad cops that were involved and the CIA and he wrote 5,000 letters to every police department in NYC but no one would listen.

The FBI opened a file on him and told him to leave it alone, quit stirring things up. His step mother worked for the phone company and had inside information on the CIA trying to take over the phones so they could listen in and buy government bonds and blow up the World Trade Center but no one would listen. He did everything he could to prevent it from happening, he said, his conscience was clear.

At some point I said if all that was true, why hasn’t the CIA just killed him to keep him quiet. He looked surprised, like he hadn’t thought about that, then he shook his head sadly and said they usually just try to get  you to kill yourself.

Up until this point I thought he was just a nutty driver trying to get a rise out of people by telling stories. But CrazyMan believed what he was saying. He kept coming back to the hermaphrodite and fake rape charge and equating it with Sept. 11. See it’s all because she had a penis.

I couldn’t wait to be done with the laundry.

He talked the whole time. See, all that because she had a penis. Sept.11 never had to happen.

It was getting creepy.

Have you ever had to fold your underpants in front of a crazy person? It’s quite unsettling.

Trust me.

*I wrote everything down the moment I got back in the truck, but this is only a tiny bit of it. I kid you not.