it's tough being *first*!

I love the crazies... I found my calling serving coffee to the folks escaping both aliens and the CIA in Santa Cruz. I found their stories eerily similar- conspiracy? Anyway, we had general rules - the thicker the coat and the hotter the day- the crazier the customer.

My calling, not serving coffee, but becoming a therapist and working with folks with psychotic disorders.

Maybe he lined the outside of his house with tin foil as well. He has to be one of those people who put the tin foil on his windows to save energy.
The crazies come my way as well. When I worked in a pharmacy, I got a call from a man asking me if 4 inches was small for a penis and what did I think?
Let me give you some background, I was a biology major and I don't blush.
I promptly told him that he had to work with what God gave him.
He hung up on me. :)

He sounds familiar. We may be related!

I bet he got much better reception on that t.v. after he covered it (and the surrounding areas) in tin-foil - reminds me of being a kid and having to hold the homemade antennae attached to the rabbit ears - hee hee watching t.v. from all angles.
(they didn't - and still don't - run cable to the boon docks where I grew up - my poor mom is completely deprived)

That is the most awesome story ever. Thanks for making me laugh this morning.

Laurie, Sweetie! That is one of the BEST stories I've ever heard! You should send this story to the Museum of Atomic Testing in Las Vegas. Maybe they would hire you as a couselor for those with alien pschoses.

Definitely time to start writing that book. You owe it to the world, Laurie.

Love this story. So sweet and cute and L.A.ish.

so, i guess i'm crazy, too, cos i'm still waiting for you to get me my horoscope, tho i have managed to get out of bed and go to work and fix dinner and do laundry and knit and all that without it, so maybe i'm only a little crazy.

My husband attracts the crazies. It doesn't matter where we go, if there's a crazy anywhere close by, they'll find him. According to one of them, there are civilizations on the moon that the government knows about, but doesn't want to tell us.

There are crazies up here in the frozen north too. Like the drunk guy who broke into my friends house to make himself some breakfast at 4:00am. He got really mad when he found out she didn't have any bacon to go with his scrambled eggs & shells.

I can attest to the fact that Los Angeles is where all the crazy people come to live, work and shop. I was an intern at KWEST 106 FM, which is now POWER 106 FM, I answered the request line. 99% of the time people would give me their request and I'd write it down on a log and that was the end of the phone call. But...there were maaaany lonely people out there. The DJ's would always announce which intern was manning the phones so when the lonely people called they called me by name just like we were old pals. I got my share of loonies who thought the radio waves were harming them and I respectfully requested that they turn their radios off. I had men write poetry for me and I even got fan mail. I was asked out. I was proposed to. One of my regular callers told me he was a quadraplegic. Please do not ask me how he held or dialed the telephone because I never asked. I have to thank God that no one knew where the radio station was located or who knows who would have been there waiting for me at midnight when my shift was over.

Its sad when you hear about people like this. On one hand they are amusing, and you want to 'help' them. I know, because I've been there....wanting to offer my help.

But then you wind up torturing yourself because you can't help but wonder if the person is ok, or what happened to them or if you're enabling them.

Did they give you any good recipes?

I'm so glad I have your blog to read. It definately helps this low man on the totem pole feel much better and gives him a much needed laugh.. and why is he talking in the third person now??

I came accros your site a few days ago by way of stephanie feagan and she just walks around with it. Your blog is pure enjoyment. Southern Alien deth ray miracle cure, I love it. I'm goning to pass that along to my dad who thinks that the cable company is the route of all evil.

Ha ha ha! I've been in radio for 13 years and I've seen so many crazies I think they outnumber the non-crazies.
The latest is the guy who told us the government is testing new laser guns by shooting them at the cows on his farm.

Does it really have to be the heavy duty kind? All I can find is the cheap aluminum foil I bought at T@rget.

I have to got meet you take you to dinner sometime. You have the best stories EVER. :)

That was TOO funny, thanks for sharing that, Laurie!

OK, I realize that if I was to say, “Thank God I found you,” I would sound like a complete nut, tin foil or not, but TG just the same. Here I am in California, missing all things Southern and I stumble upon your blog and what do I hear first thing but, “Y’all.” Now I know you are real because no one west of the Mason Dixon knows how to spell “Y’all” and who else but a true daughter of the South would have the decency to capitalize “South” like the proper noun it is?!?
Now, having said that I love finding you and your darlin’ blog, I must point out that you were a bit (just a bit mind you) redundant in your intro with the statement, “obsessive-compulsive knitter.” Dear girl, surely you know that as a knitter you are not just expected –but required- to be obsessive. If that were not true, why would we do it after all?
Happy to have found another displaced Southern soul in CA, I can go happily on with my day. Even happier, there is a new yarn store in town, a must on my ‘to do’ list this week.
And although I remember the LA heat (and none too fondly either) it’s 44 here on the sunny Central Coast of CA, could you send some of that heat up our way? And what nut case coined the phrase, “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity”? They haven’t seen humidity in CA until their shoes rot in the closet from one season to the next…
B

Ooh, ooh! I wonder if he was related to the guy at the Borders Books in East Brunswick, NJ who used to corner me in the music department and ask if I'd ever seen "the big undulatin' space worms in the sky" over Asbury Park... after a while, he'd segway into complaining that he didn't know why the courts wouldn't give him custody of his child... I had a few guesses, but was too polite (in my own, special New England way) to tell him.

Have you ever googled him? Maybe you could find him that way, and see how he's doing. Although maybe you don't want to know... Great story, anyway!

lol lol. Too funny! At least he was a crazy who didn't work with you. You have to watch out for those (particularly the one's who seem very nice). I worked with a woman who, when her mother passed away at home, kept her mother. Yes. Kept her, in her bed. Waiting for when her mother would return to the living. I am not lying--I have the newspaper clippings. She was surprisingly happy to be laid off not long before the story broke, because while she was still working with me, her mom had been dead for almost a month. Love your blog--love the stories.

Laurie, I always say there's a fine line between genius and psycho, and, my dear, you are not on that line, you ARE that line.

I think you are wasted on banking art: you should be doing stand-up, or possibly phone sex. Or WRITING A BOOK.

I sort of wunner now if I'm crazy, because I read you every day. Hm. Prolly. Anyhoo, I am surprised you didn't have him wearing a colander for a hat, those are s'posed to also be good at repelling alien rays. (Of course, you have to cover it with tin foil, because of the holes.)
We had a guy complain to our client because our Halloween-themed billboard scared him on his commute, every day. He was starring in his own version of Groundhog Day, I guess. OH and we used to have a yarn shop here where the one woman would corner you and tell you all about her "womanly problems" and doctor visits. I got really good at navigating that store at high speeds.

You are a genius!

This is one hilarious story!

i used to work tech support for a major dsl provider. at least one in every 8 calls i got was from someone who'd wrapped their modem in tinfoil to keep out aliens, the cia, the fbi, the men in black, pixies, and, once, their mother-in-law.

Wait, you mean that was a joke? It won't keep the alien rays out of my house?

"Engineers at MIT have published results showing that tinfoil helmets, prized in many circles for an assumed capacity to resist mind control rays from aliens and governments, may actually amplify the controlling signals."

http://www.nbr.co.nz/home/column_article.asp?id=13461&cid=3&cname=

Uh, Laurie, you may have actually intensified the alien rays for that poor dude.

I've had lots of jobs with crazy contact from low person at the newspaper where I worked to doing intake at an employment law firm. (Everyone who got fired called us...) I miss my crazy contacts now and then.

However, I am the low person at our law firm. Someone called recently because he was in contact with someone from Nigeria. He really wanted to help this poor person from Nigeria get his money out of the country, but his wife made him call a lawyer first. I am NOT making this up.

Laurie, I just have to thank you for always giving me a good laugh. What you say is always sooooo true. I'm a cat loving, crocheting lawyer in Lubbock, and your blog is my absolute favorite. I've had those phone calls, too. You have a marvelous writing talent! Good luck with the latest project.

One of my brothers used to be a police officer here in Atlanta and had a "regular alien caller". She already used tin foil hats to keep them away. He would go to her house, kind of fiddle around with (that's Southern for "fix") her hat, straighten the tin foil out as much as he could and she'd be happy as could be. Until the next week when she'd call again. Sometimes if he wasn't too busy, he'd even help her make a new hat.

Who knew tin foil could keep your food warm AND scare away the aliens. Not too many products can claim that!

Laurie,
I'm so glad I found your blog - you are so funny! Thanks for the giggle. I have a knit shop in Minneapolis so if you are in town sometime be sure to drop by. I'm probably closer to your mom's age, by the way. The other blog comments are just as humurous - you must bring it out in people. I have a website: www.creativefibers.com and blog: Fiberit
Please keep posting

Now see? I love stories like this. If I hadn't seen actual photographs of you, and maybe even footage of your cousin's football game with you as the color commentator, I would think your whole blog was a delightful and charming modern Southern novel. (And I suppose those pictures and football footage could have been faked with alien death rays, so perhaps I should not be so sure of myself...)

Love ya darlin!

Oh now that's a great story! It is quite funny to imagine somewhere out there, there is a house with tin foil taped over everything. It would probably help with the elecric bill. With all those reflective surfaces, you wouldn't need much light. You may have saved him on his electric bill too.
:)

Tinfoil is a great thing. While living a completely uninsulated apartment in north Texas one summer, I descended into one of the lower circles of hell when I decided I had no choice but to cover the west-facing windows with tinfoil. Looked and felt like trailer trash, but damn, it worked!

You're a gifted writer, Laurie, and I'm glad I discovered your blog.

Oh how I love the stories you tell!

Oh I love the crazies. For a time I worked at a university bookstore and you weren't considered a "real employee" until you got the call from the woman who wanted a book "with pictures of monkeys doing things that humans would do." I talked to her so many times it made me want to publish the book so I could end her torment.

Well, maybe the two of you could collaborate on "101 Uses for Tin Foil!"

Lauri, what a fabulous story! And honestly, what a wonderful thing you did for that lonely man (short of paying for his necessary therapy, of course!) Keep those wonderful stories coming--you need to have another front-page story soon. Hmmmm...perhaps another great occasion to be on the front page of the newspaper would be the publication of your first book???!!! Just sayin' is all.

I found a picture on the internets of tin foil guy's work cubicle...

Dial-up warning: large image!

http://tinyurl.com/ye4poc

OK - I ran a medical hotline. Nuff said.

I had a co-worker who was in regular contact with "the Aliens." I took her with me once to the home of a TV producer to pick up something from his wife. I wanted to keep her in the car so she wouldn't start telling the TV producer's wife about "the Aliens." Of course she followed me in and started babbling about "the Aliens." The TV Producer's wife started telling her own alien abduction story and they talked for hours. I was kind of hurt. Apparently "the Aliens" have no interest in talking to me or shooting rays in my windows.

Curses, foiled again ;)

Simon the Alien Legree

Oh my Lord, the flashbacks! I once worked phones for a big old bank, and didn't I just get the...erm...INTERESTING customers.

Thanks for a great belly-laugh, Laurie.

I always feel so welcome here. What is wrong with sticking your finger in a socket?

It kinda makes me wonder what crazies did previous to Galaleio. I suppose instead of aliens there were demons, but who would want to admit to being kidnapped by demons in that day and age? It would be a good way to get yourself hung as a witch...
*wanders away pondering*

That's an amazing job. I wouldn't have been able to take it :)

Umm, so... I have an "Is it just me" question... I was intrigued by the ad for Arbor Beading at the top of your ads, so I clicked it. My office blocks www.arborbeading.com under the "Sex" category. Is that a glitch in my office's firewall, or is this maybe the kind of "hand-beaded" work I'm not actually so interested in purchasing for my mother's birthday?

That's an amazing job. I wouldn't have been able to take it :)

Umm, so... I have an "Is it just me" question... I was intrigued by the ad for Arbor Beading at the top of your ads, so I clicked it. My office blocks www.arborbeading.com under the "Sex" category. Is that a glitch in my office's firewall, or is this maybe the kind of "hand-beaded" work I'm not actually so interested in purchasing for my mother's birthday?

It kinda makes me wonder what crazies did previous to Galaleio. I suppose instead of aliens there were demons, but who would want to admit to being kidnapped by demons in that day and age? It would be a good way to get yourself hung as a witch. And kidnapped by angels? Burned as a heritic....
*wanders away pondering*

Ahh... that's a beautiful story.

I work for a computer services group, and once we got a call from a man who we first thought was having someone hack into his computer. But he was very agitated, calling the chancellor's office to complain and claiming we had opened some kind of hole into his computer.

After I talked to him (rather extensively), he explained to me that someone was getting into his *house* through his computer, and had replaced all the furniture in his house with exact duplicates.

I explained that he needed to run an anti-virus program on his computer. This would close up the hole that someone had built in his computer and would prevent anyone from getting in through that again. I also recommended he change his front door locks. Ya know, just in case. And hey, to give him something else to do.

He thanked me effusively and never called back.

I've read your blog for awhile but I usually don't comment. I have to say that you are hilarious!!! I have to deal with crazies at work too (not quite that crazy though). That was brillant!! Please keep up the stories.

Girl,

You know you need to be committed, right? That was funny.

Actually, I was once told by a psychic that I attract weird people, and that they come and go in my life. Hmmm.
It's true.

Before I EVEN read the comments so far... There is this lady in town who walks everywhere. (I see her at least once a month walking somewhere.) Something like 15 years ago I lived next door to her daughter, which is how I know this story. She taped newspaper over every outlet, phone jack, window, etc. She swore "THEY" were watching her. I always wondered who "THEY" were. Now I know, it was the aliens. Thanks Laurie!!

Damn. HEAVY DUTY foil. No wonder the alien rays are still getting in...thanks ever so much for the info. Off to re-wrap the top of the TV and all the unused electrical outlets. thanks again!

And here I use the aluminum foil to keep the cats off the potting soil in our larger plants. Wait, I guess we could consider them 'alien life forms'...at least mine are.

Heehee. Crazies are people too!

Teehee. I wish my life were that interesting.

That is truly one of the best "I've had some crazy ones, let me tell ya" stories I've ever heard. :)

The women in my family are weird magnets. That's what we call it - if there's a crazy in the building they'll gravitate to us.

My mom used to work for a teetiny local paper and she got the crazy man who came in, regularly, to tell her that the CIA, FBI, NSA, NRA, KGB, STASI and probably FEMA and agents from the ATF used to regularly follow him around town in long black sedans. When my mother pointed out that surely all those groups weren't COOPERATING to follow one person - he assured her that, while it might sound strange, it was the gospel truth.
My mother, being Southern, just listened and made the right sympathetic noises. I think that's what draws the crazies in; they can sense that certain people are going to listen and talk to them like they are making sense.
I had a nice man at the Burger King sit down at my table once to show me a rock. A special moon rock that he brought back from the moon while he was Astral Projecting himself.

I swear, I love your stories! I sat her just laughing, imagining if I would be bold enough to tell someone to cover their electrical outlets with tin foil!
Priceless, Laurie!

I think I have a sign over my head that only lunatics can see that says "psychiatric help--5 cents"...you know, like Lucy in Peanuts.

Speaking of crazy, what did you think of my crazy scarf???

Sounds to me like you were awesome at PR.

That is simply the most hilarious thing ever. You sure do tell a good story!

So you're the reason why people line their windows with foil, huh?

Heh!
You should have done time as a bartender -- I swear I've met every crazy within a 10 mile radius of every bar I've ever slung booze in!

You'd have been a natural... And at least it pays more than $7.15 per hour!

And here is where the tinfoil man now lives, not so far from my house. About an hour south of me.
http://www.blacktable.com/elder040114.htm

Love ya CAP!

Newspapers attract those kind of calls, CAP. The city desk at the LADN regularly gets calls from a Crazy guy who just launches into a long diatribe about the Zionist conspiracy...it does no good to even try to reason with him. He's not even entertaining.

When I worked for a small paper in Kansas, we had a gentleman come in one Sunday afternoon, resplendent in a three-piece suit, complete with a cane. *I* let him in, thinking he was one of the funeral home directors, come to deliver an obit (this was before fax machines.)

Instead, he proceeded to tell my 4-foot, 1-inch tall elderly editor that the local college was SLAUGHTERING people on stage!

They were doing a production of "Sweeney Todd," the musical.

He thought the gore was real.

Turns out he stopped by the police first and THEY sent him to US.

You really should write a book you know. I'm just saying...

When I was in college in the late '70s there was a guy near campus who was in school FOREVER (he's probably still there) who spent most of his time at the coffeeshop. No matter the weather -- burnin' hot or phrasin' cold (we are in the South; "phrasin'" is much colder than just "freezin'")-- he wore a white T-shirt and denim jacket. His hair was cut exactly like Prince Valiant.

He also wore, daily and regardless of the weather, a neck brace and any one of various hats (the only thing that changed with the weather was the hats) hat and if he sat next to you for five minutes, you would be treated to a view of the inside of his hat du jour ... AND the inside of the neck brace.

Both were cleverly lined with tinfoil to repel:

1. The CIA, who were trying to read his thoughts trough the implanted transmitter in his brain, placed there by the abovementioned CIA, which broadcast his thoughts unless he reflected them BACK INTO HIS HEAD

2. The aliens, who had planted a transmitter in his spine at the base of his neck. He said it was like a homing device, such as we use to track wildlife, only much smaller than the tracking devices of the time (because of their advanced technology) and with an "eternity battery" (for the same reason). He claimed that the neck brace also reflected the tracking-device waves back into himself.

If you asked him how he managed to sleep and take showers and such, he would be happy to inform you that all of his windows were covered in tinfoil, of course, and so were his ceilings.

I often wonder what happened to him.

there's a place for you in heaven my friend.

i love it! i have dealt with the crazies in public most of my working life, and it can make for trying times. i like to try and make them feel better and help along their day, and if it so happens to make me laugh or feel better, that's even better. :) glad to know you enjoy that too.

Sure beats the woman at the hospital who pulled down her sweatpants to show me her insect bite, and did I think it was Lyme disease?

Aww, you were so sweet to the crazy guy! No wonder everyone loves you. :)

Makes me wonder what the heck the crazy folk would do if aluminum foil didn't exist. Man, the only crazy people I run into tend to be at tradeshows and there, at least, I can plead a prior appointment and bolt.

That is a fantastic Friday morning story. :)

Maybe the Aliens took him.

It *is* a Southern thing to indulge crazy people. Sometimes I look around me and realize I could be living in a Faulkner, Welty, O'Connor, and/or McCullers novel/short story.. We grow up much more accepting of people's eccentricities. Sometimes we don't even register that someone actually is crazy until we get a little perspective. LOL

This post is a perfect example of why I love your blog so much. :)

I think that was one of the funniest f-ing (sorry toddler mom, not allowed to swear, even in email) things I've ever read. I stop by occaisionally, but now must make it a habit. I have encountered the crazies every now again, glad I'm not alone. But really, in this universe, we're never alone...

What a beautiful story. When I lived in Pasadena, there was a guy I would see on Lake Street, an dto whom I would give a little money from time to time. I admit, I was a little unnerved when he started talking about the aliens. It did not occur to me to offer some practical solutions.

Hello Laurie...

Wow thanks for the great story!! I can not wait for the book. I hope that day is soon.

And here I was thinking that I got all the crazies working front desk/night audit at a hotel. Let me tell you I get more then my fair share. :)

My grandma's cousin is schizophrenic, and she used to do the foil thing. She showed up at my confirmation party with two rubber bath mats, wearing a shower cap under a wig. She stood on one mat, dropped the next in front of her, stepped onto it, and moved the first one to the front. She also unplugged everything--lamps, fridge, clocks, everything. She's better now, on meds.

Oh my I can relate! I started working for a County Supervisor as an intern and took most of the constituent calls. My absolute favorite was a man who was obsessed with changing how pizza parlors charged for toppings. His rational (and what this had to do with County politics, I know not) was that when you order one topping, you get 1 cup of topping. And when you order 3 toppings, you get roughly the same amount - but 1/3 of each. Yet with 3 toppings, you pay more. NOW THIS SIMPLY ISN'T RIGHT. A cup is a cup! This should be regulated! They should not be able to charge me more when I am getting the same amount of topping! And so on...

Dear goodness, you make me laugh! I'm a nurse, and one of my crazy patients, a very sweet man, needed to take his medicine regularly. I knew he had a problem with hearing voices, so I told him if the voices ever told him not to take his medicine, he was to call me immediately and I would deal with them so he could take his meds. Fortunately he never called me for that, but I'm sitting here now thinking, did I really ask a crazy person to call me at the height of craziness for a solution? And I thought *he* was the crazy one?

Oh, sweetie, the only thing to one up this is if it had actually happened in the South! I worked for the Park City News in Bowling Green, KY and the stories I could tell! Sometimes, between taking calls for Obituaries and Church News, I wondered if they were putting on little ole' Northern Me. But they weren't. One of my co-workers said she always knew it was going to be a bad day when she would find a cat duct-taped into her mail box. I will always remember the time I had to interview the 100-yr, old man who turned out to be a) not 100 years old and b) not living on his own and c) forgot to tell me about half of his family. I think that, just like Crazy, some people are Crazy-attractors. Either you learn to live with it or you let it make YOU crazy!

oh, the stories I could post if this were anonymous....

I had that song "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley stuck in my head when I started to read this post, actually when I just got on your blog and tried to play it. "Maybe you're craaaazy..." :)

I used to live upstairs from a crazy guy... if we coughed and he heard us (thin floors).. he thought we were sending telepathic waves and picking on him. One time we must have coughed particularly loud because he ran full tilt up the staircase and punched out both of the windows in my door.. then ran back down.

Some how he must have figured that would cure our coughing/spying on him. go figure

HA! I worked at a newspaper for five years, and I got calls from people just like that. One of my coworkers got a call from a lady who wanted us to photograph all the different colored light bulbs the aliens had put in her house. He calmly pointed out to her that, unfortunately, everything but the front page was black and white so the alien bulbs wouldn't show up.