I believe Crazy-Fanny-Pack-Lady lives in the apartment complex I recently vacated. Every night when I came home she would be standing in the middle of the roadway, smoking, and glaring at the cars as they passed. Unabashedly staring, really. In that way that makes you uncomfortable.
I couldn't avoid her, as there was only one way back to my apartment. One route only.
Sometimes, when I would come around the bend, I would startle her, perhaps with my headlights. She might be trying to light a match off the sidewalk, or chasing her fanny pack around in a circle like a mutt chasing her tail. Sometimes, she would be waiting for me. Impatiently puffing and tapping her foot as if to say, "you're late. Where have you been?"
Guests would come to visit me and tell me they almost turned back when the Crazy-Fanny-Pack-Lady gave them the stink eye. I took to warning people. "She'll be out there. She's always out there. Just don't stop, act like you know what you're doing, I believe her to be harmless, though I have no actual knowledge of such."
Once, when my parents were staying with me for a weekend, I took their camera, without their knowledge, and snapped a picture of the Crazy-Fanny-Pack-Lady. When the photos were developed my mother asked about the unusual picture with the stranger. "Oh, that's the Crazy-Fanny-Pack-Lady," my father told her. "She's the Crazy-Fanny-Pack-Lady, of course. Just look at her. She's crazy. And she has a fanny pack. Hence Crazy-Fanny-Pack-Lady!"
So, while I was always aware of her, I never wrote about her here. Tommy used to suggest I write a Crazy-Fanny-Pack-Lady entry. He used to say she would be a welcome addition to the cast of crazies that populate my diary, but I could never find the right angle, or any reason to tell you about her.
This weekend, Tommy and I boarded a PATCO train for Philly. We were chatting amiably when Crazy-Fanny-Pack-Lady boarded the train with her boyfriend, Toothless-Joe, and sat right in front of us. She was unable to stare without turning around to face us, so instead she unabashedly eavesdropped. Tommy and I tried to ignore it.
Then, for the first time ever, I heard Crazy-Fanny-Pack-Lady speak. Her voice was much as I imagined it might be. Rough around the edges with a hint of a slur.
"Why's that there for?" she asked Toothless-Joe.
"That's there so you don't fall down in the tracks and die when a train comes and hits you. Why don't you go play on it and see if you can kill yourself. Go on, now. Go on." Toothless-Joe said none of this with malice. He grinned a big toothless grin, enormous really, and clapped gleefully at the suggestion Crazy-Fanny-Pack-Lady, might climb the guard rail become injured.
Neither of them spoke for the remainder of their trip, which incidentally was as long as a single stop. They got off together, holding hands and giggling.
Tommy and I ran into them a second time that night when we were returning from the city. It was serendipity.
~~~~~~
That same Saturday, before the train ride, we met at our favorite coffee shop. He was there, the stalker I mean. He sort of circled around us. for a while before he landed at a table taller than ours which provided him with nice views of us.
He interrupted me in mid-sentence to say, "Hey, there. Hey. So, hey. How you guys doing? Alright?"
"Fine," I replied curtly.
"The leaves sure are beautiful this time of year. I have to remember where to go down and see them, you know? I need to remember, because the color is controlled by the soil, moisture, et cetera."
"Oh," I said. Tommy refused to acknowledge him. Tommy tells me I'm too nice. He considers it a disadvantage Midwesterners must suffer. He's probably right.
~~~~~~
On the train there was a man who was in his mid to late fifties. I'm guessing, of course, I didn't ask him for proof of age.
Elsewhere in the same car, there were two teenaged girls, both hot in a trashy kind of way. The man made every effort to get their attention, and every time they looked at him, he made little kissy sounds and come hither glances.
They suddenly became self-conscious of the trashyness of them. It was as if they dressed themselves for the first time without parental approval and before their very eyes everything their mothers had ever said about men and trashy women was coming true.
When they left the train, they passed right by him and his kissy noises got louder. I expected him to reach out and attempt to touch them, but he was strictly hands off. There are some lines I guess you don't cross. /P>
~~~~~~
At Wee's urging, I made up a survey! Won't you take it? My survey? It's fairly pointless, but so much of life is pointless, isn't that so?
Take my survey here.
Posted at 1:35 p.m.
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