You know people with crazy eyes? You know what I’m talking about. They can be a completely trim and presentable person, but the instant you look into their eyes you know that they’re completely 100% off their rocker. It’s the way they don’t blink, or the way they protrude like they’ve got some sort of thyroid disorder. Except it’s not thyroids.
I saw a man like that this week. He was one of those nightmares that hover around the Starbucks bar while the normal people get coffee and leave. The poor pair of baristas (baristii?) spent nearly twenty minutes suffering with the guy, an old square type with dad pants and thin-rimmed glasses. He used his newspaper like a police baton directing traffic.
He was Republican, he hated that Barack Obama wanted to start charging a Christmas Tree Tax, and he hated Soviet Russia, and he only listened to classical music while working. Now, none of these things are particularly offensive to me but these are things I didn’t need to learn about him in twenty minutes from all the way across the store. He started babbling something about the Marines. How Jefferson created them. How they’re an essential part of our military presence in the world. And the Russians. They’re encroaching upon our free world.
He moved to the side while someone else ordered, and then got in line for a second cup.
It’s okay, bro, I wanted to say. The wall fell back in ’89.
“What can I get for you?” the barista asked.
“How about some world peace?” the square said.
“We don’t have any of that…” the barista replied slowly.
“Well, how about some world obliteration?” the square said.
The barista chuckled uneasily and they made up his drink and he took it and turned towards me on his way out the door and I saw them.
Crazy eyes.