Freak Magnet

Some people collect pets or antique bottles, or books or dolls.  I know one psycho that collects clown paintings.  That guy is part of my personal collection of broken people.

I went to a psychic once who told me that I have the same kind of aura that doctors have...it makes people tell me things.  And then I am burdened with the knowing of these things and often with the faux-friendship of the madmen who felt like it was okay to tell me and only me whatever it is that they just couldn't share with anyone else.  These people tend to never ask me anything at all about myself and I don't offer anything.  I am a keeper of random confessions.  Such a lucky duck.

They say you never forget your first.  My first weirdo was a boy named Brandon.  His parents knew my parents because we came from the same adoption agency.  Brandon and I assumed this meant we were some kind of cousin.  He was a nice kid but by the age of 6 it was obvious that he was going to have trouble finding a prom date.  We both had horrific hair cuts, truly unfortunate glasses, and we were terrible at running.  We spent a lot of time having deep discussions.  When we saw our younger siblings eating boogers, it was Brandon that suggested that we might be missing out on the best food group in the world, simply because our mothers told us that was gross and we blindly obeyed.  He made a decent argument but I did not try them.

Odd kid.  Good kid, but odd.

Brandon was susceptible to ridiculous injuries.  He gave himself a tonsillectomy when he tripped while running with a ruler.  I remember another trip that he made to the emergency room when he blew a giant bubble with his gum and it stuck his eyelid shut.  That peanut butter trick?  Doesn't work so well with eyelashes.

If it sounds like I am being unkind, I'm not.  Let me even the field by self-reporting that I stabbed myself in the eyeball while trying to open the spork package when I was in kindergarten.  And someone in my family still cautions me every time we go to a KFC.

I don't know where Brandon is anymore.  Facebook might, but I'm not really into that.  Besides, I have my hands full juggling my current crackpots.  (That was crackpots, not crackheads.  Crackheads intimidate me with their jitteryness and unpleasant odor and I avoid them as much as possible.)  At the moment I am fostering an aging alcoholic who favors late night phone calls, a newly single mom acquaintance who insists that it is not fair that she's the only one going through a divorce, and a guy that has George Washington's wooden smile and even though he talks a lot I don't know what he's saying because all I can think about is those teeth and how I totally thought they were in The Smithsonian with Mr. Rogers' sweater.  

Good ol' Brandon.  He trained me well.  My tolerance for the bizarre is high.