Invasion of the Psychos

Despite my 45-minute appointment with Dr. Yoda, Ph.D., today, at no time did I actually discuss a truly aggravating incident involving a complete nutcase I had to hang out with for several hours yesterday.

Last night we had tickets for a Roger Waters concert at the Shoreline in Mountain View. I have to digress here and say that I really don't like the Shoreline--the acoustics are fine, but it's so huge, and I'm really not a crowd person. Plus, when you're 5-foot-one-and-a-half, and you have lawn tickets, and everybody's standing up, that is a recipe for not being able to see anything but the TV screen. Ugh.

So anyway, Rob and I went to the show with a guy he plays music with, T., and his wife C. We pull up to their house at around 5:00 to pick them up. This was my first time meeting C., and I could tell practically upon sight that I was not going to like her. It was like some primitive animal instinct, or crazy-radar; or maybe it was just a glint in her eyes. Sure enough, within one minute of conversation with her, I realized that she was--pardon my Anglo-Saxon--utterly fucking nuts.

She was just one of those people who has something to say about everything and absolutely has to say it; who just knows and is right about anything that comes out of her mouth because of her oh-so-worldly life experience; and she completely bossed her husband around, which was hard to watch. Plus I had major doubts about the degree of veracity of most of what she said. For instance, she referred repeatedly to how she "grew up in Spain," but I detected zero trace of any accent. Not that people who grow up in other countries can't speak fluent, accent-free English, but, at the risk of sounding like a know-it-all myself, I'm fairly good at detecting even slight accents, probably because my mom spent years teaching ESL students from a variety of countries while I was growing up. Even people who grow up entirely in the U.S. with immigrant parents often have a slight accent.

Anyway, I could only conclude that "grew up in" meant "lived there for a while, perhaps a few years." And C. just did not stop talking throughout the entire three-hour-plus traffic-filled car ride to Mountain View. As previously noted, no matter what topic of conversation came up, she had something of dubious accuracy or interest to add. Meanwhile, I made only the bare minimum of conversation required by politeness. Fortunately, her yammering filled any potentially awkward silences. Rob said later that he can always tell how much I like a person, or how comfortable I am in a conversation, by my level of talkativeness vs. silence, and that he could totally tell I was not happy.

Luckily, the concert was loud, and crowded, and Rob and I were able to make the excuse of "being able to see better from way up here" after T. and C. had settled their lawn chairs. And then we took a potty break, and gee, what do you know--it was just too crowded to try to find them again. (Actually, that part is true. I hate having to wend my way through a crowd in the dark, stepping on blankets and feet and god-knows-what.) And on the way home there was blessed silence because everyone fell asleep while I drove.

Unfortunately, my method of dealing with Crazy Woman was to drink a lot of beer very rapidly; and then we got home really late. So today I was very tired and slightly hung over. (Whee! Wednesday hangover!) I also felt slightly depressed because I've really been missing some of my friends (which I did talk to Dr. Yoda about). Being phone-phobic and living in Modesto are not conducive to staying in good contact with people. But I do miss you guys (you know who you are--many of you are over there in the Blogs list). So let this constitute a shout-out to the Walnut House Kroo for another Oregon get-together sometime, and a yahoo to the Millswomen for a celebratory shin-dig for TadMack, who sold her novel!!