Garden Variety Weird

Now and then someone drifts into my professional life who's flat out spooky. For no good reason, he or she makes my skin crawl and I want to avoid them as much as possible. They don't have unsettling tattoos or gold teeth, don't dress in any way out of the ordinary, don't carry a machete in their back pocket, don't look evil or even dangerous. But close contact with them sets off all my primeval instincts. They're just garden variety weird - oranges in a sea of apples - not threatening or unbalanced, just somehow wrong and not to be confused with the true community eccentrics or those temporarily on the loose due to the generosity of day passes.

The eccentrics arrive with a touch of flamboyance and flair - a tall, too thin scarecrow of a man in a black cape and velvet fedora. He carries a silver handled cane and doesn't enter as much as he sweeps in like a strong wind, commanding attention and scattering those in his way like confetti. A stick figure of an old woman wearing clashing colors and stage makeup arrives in a wheelchair - her parchment skin hangs from her bones and she has the ghastly smile of a crackly old crone. She is like a fragile, breakable bird - decrepit and nearly transparent with age but still able to snap orders with a brittle and sharp expectation of being obeyed. A mother-daughter team, arm in arm and both reeking of whiskey and old money, storm the door as if prepared to meet resistance. They share a private joke and their laughter is high pitched, verging on hysteria and hormonal imbalance. The true eccentrics are colorful and move about in worlds of their own making, dismissing conformity and accepted behavior as nuisances.

The day pass people travel with only a hint of reality for company. They tend to be shy and often hesitant, fearing eye contact and always careful to be courteous and deferential. Conversations with them require constant focus as they tend to drift and are easily distracted. In a world where noise rules, they are quiet. In a world where there is much pushing and shoving, they are trampled and not noticed. They come and go with timid apologies and no real hope of finding their place in line. They are almost always harmless, traveling on unfamiliar ground with light, quick steps - a little wary, a little uncertain of their surroundings and usually medicated to some degree - journeying on their own yellow brick road, in constant search for the wizard.

Neither the day pass people or the eccentrics unnerve me but let one of the dark, weird people appear and I feel a sudden apprehension, a shiver of something close to but not quite fear. It's an anonymous, random anxiety that I want to dismiss as ridiculous but can't. Everything about them is run of the mill normal except for the fact that it isn't, there's a suggestion of wrong here, an invisible aura of disturbed. I inexplicably find myself thinking of serial killers and old Vincent Price horror movies, troubled childhoods and schizophrenic stalkers. I watch the most recent of them enter the shop - he wears khakis and a cardigan and a tweed jacket with leather patches at the elbows. His coke bottle glasses have slipped down on his nose and he pushes them up with a deliberate gesture. When I summon a smile and ask if I can help him, he looks at me for a very long time and then when I'm just about to decide that he might be a mute, he says ever so softly, No, and I realize that he's one of them. His eyes peer at me through his glasses, his arms hang loosely at his sides and I have the eerie thought that he might be evaluating me as his next meal. Eventually his stare shifts to the wine shelves and this is worse because now I think he may be considering what wine pairs best with a medium well redhead. I am saved by a ringing telephone and leave him motionless and silent in the bustling store, an island of weird in a sea of Christmas chaos. I'm too spooked to offer to help him again and pray that he will make a selection and leave. In time, he does just that - wandering out the back door, a bottle of blood red cabernet held casually against his chest. Customers instinctively clear a path for him, moving aside on reflex. He stops in the doorway and turns to give the shop a final, steady and predatory gaze before melting away into the mall. The atmosphere in the shop immediately clears and returns to normal and I give myself a sound scolding for giving way to my imagination and go back to business.

Even so, I look both ways when I leave and cross the dark parking lot. Imagination notwithstanding, anything can happen on a foggy, starless night before Christmas and it's best to be prepared and pay attention.