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Every encounter one?  I don't necessarily mean someone with an actual, clinically diagnosed psychological disorder, but maybe just someone who just doesn't seem right.

Today, at the grocery store, I had a carton of soy milk in my shopping cart.  I was approached by an old woman who demanded that I give it to her because SHE HAD BEEN ALL OVER THE WHOLE GODDAMN STORE AND COULDN'T FIND IT!  I calmly informed her that the soy milk was on the very next aisle.  NO IT WASN'T SHE HAD BEEN UP AND DOWN THAT GODDAMN AISLE AND IT WASN'T THERE AND I SHOULD GIVE HER MY GODDAMN CARTON RIGHT NOW, GODDAMMIT!  I do not put up with people swearing at me and just walked off.  Well, she followed me.  I had gone halfway across the store when I saw her pop out of an aisle (the aisle with the soy milk on it) and come striding across the store toward me.  THE SOY MILK WASN'T ON THAT GODDAMN AISLE AND I WAS A GODDAMN a***ole FOR LYING TO HER AND I HAD TO GIVE HER MY GODDAMN CARTON RIGHT NOW!  I got right in her face and told her that I was not giving her my soy milk and that she needed to leave me alone.  I WAS A GODDAMN LYING a***ole AND I WAS GOING TO HELL FOR YELLING AT AN OLD LADY!  Thankfully, she left.  A woman nearby said to me, "That lady was nuts!  I would have pepper sprayed her!"

Ever encountered anyone that unhinged for no apparent reason?

Yes.

She probably has dementia, used to be able to find things in the store and now cannot, and is paranoid.  That's more common than people know.    Or, alternatively, she has no such excuse for her behavior.  : p

I would say very very cruel things back to her. I guess I don't have that kind of patience.

Call me a wuss, but if it was causing her that much stress, I would have handed her the carton and gotten another - or offered to show her where it was.


That being said, soy milk is NASTY!!! :hatred:

Tastes like grass. Once upon a time West Soy had a chocolate soy milk that tasted better than real milk. It was discontinued.

I AM an insane person.
Really-Im sure I aint got a full deck.
I come across as a normal guy online ( :bouncegiggle:)-but Im really out of the loop.

I'm lactose intolerant, so it tastes pretty good to me.

RC, you can have my soy milk anytime.

Groovy! I like soy milk now!

We have met the insanity. And he is us.

I was at the gas station one time, and an old lady wanted to pay for her gas.  The clerk explained to her that her husband was still pumping the gas, so she couldn't pay for it until he was done.  Because, you know, they wouldn't know how much the total would be.  That was a bit too much for the old lady to comprehend I guess - she was absolutely fit to be tied.  Never had she  encountered someone so unbelievably rude in her entire life - not allowing her to pay for her purchase!

Oh good lord.   :lookingup:

Working where I do now, in the restaurant biz, you see a good many off-the-wall characters. I'm not allowed to say anything back to them though, cause then they expect me to get fired if I say anything back.

People will be rude for the hell of it, make a mess, get $40 worth of food, and leave maybe a $1 tip. Luckily, I'm not a tipped employee but my friends are, and my friends only get $2.83 per hour, as opposed to my $8.25

A few years ago I was on my way to church in a pouring rainfall and stopped at a small gas station to get a soda and a bit of breakfast.  No one was there, so I pulled up under the awning next to a pump and ran in.  An old guy pulled up to the pump in front of me and actually bumped my car's license plate with his bumper. I was rather surprised - I had left more than enough room - and made some comment to the effect that "I think you bumped my car."
  He roared at the top of his lungs "Then why don't you move the son of a b**** then?" 
  I responded that I was the one who was parked there first, and suddenly he lunges for the trunk of his car and begins trying to open it!  I thought he had a gun, so I jumped in my car and headed out rather quickly - and looked in the rear view mirror to see him chasing me with an AXE!!!!  When he couldn't catch me, he actually THREW the axe after me as I drove off!  I got a safe distance away and called the cops to let them know what had happened.

It's situations like that that make me want to get a concealed weapons permit.

I would've opened that soy milk right there in the store... and poured it over that crazy old bat's head.

But seriously folks... when I worked @ a K-Mart years ago we had a regular customer named "Tom" who was kinda like a local legend. He was middle aged and quite obviously mentally impaired in some way (think Rain Man), he would come in to the store every morning around the same time, get a soda from the snack bar, and then wander around chit-chatting with the employees about sports. He seemed to know the win-loss records, stats, and rosters of every high school sports team in the area going back at least 20 years and would gladly tell you all about how so-and-so from such-and-such school was a WAY bettter quarterback or center or goalie (depending on which sport he wanted to discuss that day) than so-and-so from the other school back in 1981, and he could go on for days if you let him. He was kinda irritating but harmless so most of us would just go "Yeah, OK, Tom, whatever you say" and then try to manufacture an excuse to get away from him ("I have to go in the stock room for more boxes, catch you later").

Anyway, during the course of my employment there the store underwent a major remodeling project, and the old snack bar was dismantled and closed down (later to become a Little Caesar's Pizza Station). When "Tom" came in the day after the snack bar closed and found there was nowhere for him to get his soda, he FREAKED OUT. Started yelling, screaming, grabbing things off of shelves and throwing them to the floor, etc., etc. Fortunately our store manager had his parents' home phone # and had to call them to come "talk him down" and take him home.

Speaking as a crazy person, I've found that it's the normal people that ain't quite right in the head.
It like George Thorogood said, "Everybody funny! Now you funny too!"
Thus, I live my outdoor life by one simple rule; No matter where you are, there you go."

I'm sure I work with a few........nope, not lying I'm serious.

We had one at work. She was Polish (with old school carnies roots and connections), hyperactive, emotional unstable (either laughing hysterical or crying. Yes, she cried at work for reasons unknown) and everyone's business was her business. She openly admitted that the males at work made her horny because she wasn't getting any from her spouse, and she would start fights with younger female co-workers out of jealousy because she was pushing 50.
She certainly had a problem with her age which she tried to hide behind tons of badly applied make-up, ridiculous ("tight") clothing and excessive visits at the tanning salon.
Her whole appearance was just "ROFL" but you didn't dare to laugh at her face because she had a nasty attitude, was anti-social and just unpleasant in general.
Everyone thought she was nuts and I think she actually was. She was eventually let go from work which was a huge relief to say the least.

Wow. I've never had a brush with the homicidal. Good on you, indianasmith, for getting the hell out of there.

I am very familiar with people who have mental problems. I work in a public library, which is one of the refuges left open to absolutely everybody.

My main familiarity is with people who are mentally retarded (I'm sure there's a better term, but I can't remember it). There are several group homes that usually come in in groups. In general, there are no problems, but there are times when they become agitated, which can become difficult. I do what I do for everybody, remain calm and try to help as best I can.

However, there are many other patrons with a host of other mental problems. The most visible are the paranoid schizophrenics. These are people who's brains are telling them that absolutely everybody is conspiring against them, and they can't escape from it.

One example, there is a girl who comes into our library quite often, and she is either on and off her meds. When she is off her meds, she will cuss out strangers for (to us) no reason. She's currently on her meds, but I recently had a long conversation where she complained about the people around her making insulting and cutting comments. This was her paranoia seeping through. So I did what I do for everybody, listen very patiently and try to get her to voice any complaints she has to the library employees rather than the other patrons. I was kind, I was understanding, because I really do care.

Schizophrenia, in general, is a very sad story. The important thing to remember is that while the effects may not be true for everybody else, it is very, very true to the person afflicted. So I do what I do for everybody, listen very closely, and try to help them in the best way I can.

Sometimes it goes off the rails, and that person isn't allowed back because there aberrant behavior is too extreme, but I make it my business to reduce those situations as much as I can.

Yes I've encountered my share of strange kooks and characters. Most recently was a pushy insurance salesman who didn't seem to want to take "no" for an answer and was so generally creepy he left me and my girlfriend unsettled for a while after he left. He got in by pretending to be doing some sort of survey only for him to shortly thereafter whip out his insurance binder. I flat out told the guy I wasn't interested but he keep going on and on with his spiel...finally he left but there were moments I genuinely thought he was about to flip out any moment and when he left he whispered just under his breath "you'll regret this" which was certainly creepy as heck.

But yeah I've seen a lot of weirdness over the years especially when I lived in boarding houses and bedsitting rooms during my college days. There was the guy who yelled profanities and bawled very loudly at a neighboring couple for fornicating on a nightly basis damning them as sinners. There was another guy who'd get plastered and bang on the house door claiming the landlady who was old enough to be his mother had ruined him and that her current son was really his. There was the old guy who waited for his pension so he could go downtown and spend it on prostitutes, a guy that generally smelled and rarely if ever bathed. Another guy would get plastered and try and do karate while in that state and would generally end up falling on his butt but of course always claimed we were the best friends he ever had even though we hardly knew him. There was also an old woman who used to walk the streets who must have had tourette's or something given she be walking very fast and apparently cussing out the invisible man. Honestly there doesn't seem to go very many weeks I don't encounter some craziness or weirdness although most of it is more innocent harmless stuff I'd say.

It's situations like that that made me decide I needed a CCW permit.

Bring an axe to a gun fight?   :wink:

I deal with chronically mentally ill people all the time at work. I encountered a guy that made about 30 little 3" or so snowmen out of his own poop, and he's not the craziest I've encountered.

Yeah..  I actually went through the training so I could go get a permit any time.  I should probably do it, I suppose.


Yeah, it's pretty sad.  But, I will say there is hope.  About 1 in 3 people with schizophrenia left untreated will actually improve to the point they can lead a basically normal life, and another 1 in 3 can be gotten to that point with drugs and treatment.  Something not a lot of people realize is it isn't a sort of life sentence, not in all cases.

As far as crazy people..  Yes.  Seen several derelicts that were obviously insane.  One got angry and started getting aggressive, till storekeepers in the area made him leave.  There was also a kid at the library I worked at who obviously had something seriously wrong with him.  He wouldn't leave this one area, started making constant random loud noises, and then a guy came over and complained to the kid, realized the issue, and complained to the parents...  Who then were extremely rude and a fight almost broke out.  Then the parents dragged the kid off.

Yeah.

Honestly, the old fella that pulled the axe on me turned out to be the brother of a good friend of mine - he was bipolar and off his meds.  His kids took charge of him after that, and got him on a regular course of medication.  He became a fixture at the local diner later on, eating breakfast with all the other old fogies and seemingly perfectly normal.  He had no memory of the incident and I did not remind him . . . he did remember me from when I was a kid and was always very nice to me.  He passed away last year at the age of 80.  I'm kinda glad I that I just got out of his way and did not hurt him, or let him hurt me, because it was an isolated incident in an otherwise fairly calm life.

A boarder staying with an older couple I know recently flipped out and pulled a knife on the woman, all because he didn't have enough money to get his "fix" of smokes. Apparently he has an history of overdosing on Gravol and basically whatever else he can lay his hands on. Understandably the couple had to give him the boot and call the authorities...hear he's in the ward for the mentally ill now (probably where he should be anyways given he doesn't seem safe currently to have in society)....

how about a guy who, and I'm not joking, tried to run down a poor blind man with his big ass truck. yeah, I saw that happen yesterday when I was ridin my bike down Magazine Street.

Define INSANE.
When do you cross the line?
When I said I was insane-Im serious.

in·sane [in-seyn] Show IPA
adjective
1.  not sane; not of sound mind; mentally deranged.
2. of, pertaining to, or characteristic of a person who is mentally deranged: insane actions; an insane asylum.
3. utterly senseless: an insane plan.

 :wink: Sorry, couldn't resist.

I had a friend back when I was  in my 20’s when living in L.A. that had some rather unique issues.

Hell of a nice guy and a real sweetheart, but he was also bipolar and schizophrenic. He had some hereditary issues on his dad’s side of the family. Most of the time he was very functional. He was a talented chef who would work seasonally as head chef for high-end mountain resorts where he would have free room and board, save up a decent pile of money, then come back down to L.A. and hang out during the off season. He managed his condition through medication and marijuana, although the marijuana was obviously his own thing. Judge if you want, but the marijuana kept him very level and focused. I’ve never jumped on the pothead bandwagon that marijuana is the solution for everything, but in this case, it really was a positive. About 95% of the time he was a perfectly lucid, rational, and charming guy.

Anyway, he would occasionally run into episodes, and when he did, it meant he was going to become a little dangerous and we would make sure we contacted his family when it did. He had this strange thing where he was a very creative writer, but his creative side would be what would set him off. When he would suddenly start writing, we knew he was about to go manic and would contact his mother immediately because she was used to dealing with it. It wouldn’t happen immediately. He would start by writing pages and pages of stream-of-consciousness stuff, and talking about traumatic things that happened to him when he was younger. His writing would frequently talk about Oberon, the king of the faeiries from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We eventually learned that once he started talking about Oberon, and almost taking it on as a persona, the manic phase had fully kicked in and he might start getting dangerous to himself or others. I know this sounds like I’m making it up, but I’m not. In fact, I’m even leaving stuff out.

It was so strange because he was a genuinely sweet guy, very intelligent, and very well-read. I always thought it was such a shame because it was his creative side, which was really very fascinating, that unfortunately would bring on his psychosis. It was as if one couldn’t get too deep into creative discussions with him for fear of setting off a trigger.

I still think of him from time to time and wonder what became of him. If he was in the company of the wrong people at the wrong time, things could get very scary. I fear that sooner or later he would have had to end up institutionalized, and if I’m realistic about it that is probably the case. It’s just very sad.