A few memories

One day, around the time that I was too young to drive a car or listen to good music, I was with my mother waiting on a pizza to be prepared. This guy walked in and asked if he could sit with us. He already had given me bad vibes. He looked to be in his mid-forties, had shaggy grayish hair under a trucker hat, and a t-shirt with the Batman symbol on it. Yep. Real sane guy. I know he spoke to us for about 10 minutes, but all I remember is him starting up with government conspiracy theories.

 

“The government is watching us all the time. They’re just trying to keep us all in check. They got these satellites strategically placed all around planet Earth.” He leaned in just a little closer and lowered his voice. I knew that it was going to be very important information. Real insider stuff. “They can even zoom in through your window and watch you and your old man in bed. Zap you right in between the ass ’cause they got lasers.” I was getting a little nervous. I needed to go with him on this one. Any wavering from what he was saying could possibly tip him off that I was with “them,” and not with him, which, in retrospect, seems like a good place to be. I nodded in agreement the whole time. I remember opening my mouth once to say, “Yeah. They’re keeping tabs on us all the time. Psh! The government?! It’s all a conspiracy.” This set him off a little bit.

It seemed that he took a liking to my mother. He asked if she was my girlfriend–a pretty slick move, even for a man in his mid-forties sporting the Bat-signal on his t-shirt.

“My name is Gary. I’m 42 years old, by the way.”

By that time, our pizza was ready, so we politely excused ourselves and made our way past crazy (or really enlightened) Gary before he could fill our heads with a bunch of other stuff to be afraid of. I haven’t seen him since. What if the government, in an effort to contain this loose cannon in these difficult times, took him out permanently? At this moment he’s either underground in one of two ways. The first is obvious, dead. Possibly from some bad meat that he ingested out of a trash bin. Or he may be underground safely by way of an impregnable lair, a bomb shelter that Gary constructed from plywood, packing foam, and lined with flattened soda cans. I suppose the flattened soda cans will keep out the radiation, and when all of us are dead or zombies, he can emerge as the only fertile man on earth, he’ll be Neo-Adam.

I salute you, Gary.