Thursday, October 6, 2005 - Being Jack Nicholson

I went to Burger King yesterday, not really newsworthy as I rarely eat Macdonalds or fast food burgers, just not a big burger fan. I was feeling lazy and went to get James the kids meal which is quick and cheap it also has a Wallace & Grommit toy in from the upcoming movie.

 In Santa Monica we have quite a number of homeless people, many of them are mentally ill, I soon discovered there were two mentally ill people in the seating area of the Burger King.

 As James and I sat there sharing the kids meal I sat listening to the insame ramblings of the 2 mentally ill people.

Perhaps it is because I have a passing interest in psychology or because of the memories of my Dad's sister who was a paranoid schizophrenic that I sat listening to the two tortured souls. As kids we would listen to my Aunt Lily when she visited and went off on one of her mad rantings, usually the rantings were about religion, sex and paranoia, not knowing any better we thought it was hilarious.

The two Burger King loonies were quite different but almost equally fascinating in their bizarre ramblings, one was a white guy, very dirty with a long black beard and filthy dishevelled clothing, he obviously had multiple personalities who seemed to duel with each other in his head. Personality number 1 had a raspy aggressive voice who ranted about sex ( mostly homosexual) and seemed to be giving personality 2 a harsh, strict verbal berating. Personalilty 2 was child-like and sobbed  while getting berated from the dominant aggressive personality.

The second person was a black guy who was paranoid, his ramblings were of racism, white devils, gold, silver and diamonds being robbed from his people and his relationship with his wife and black women in general. I really did feel like Jack Nicholson in 'One flew over the cuckoo's nest' the whole time I ate my kids meal, all we needed was Nurse Ratched to come around  shouting "medication time".