Telepathic Schizophrenic

Sometimes I really believed she was telepathic. We’d hang out together in the summer when we both happened to be outside. She lived nearby. I didn’t have her phone number and knew not to knock on her door (that’s another story), so we only got together by accident. Her name was Claire and she was schizophrenic. I think bipolar too. She seemed so fragile, so softened by her madness that I worried about her. Her dark eyes seemed to be receiving everything all at once. Her nervous system jumped and hissed like a downed power-line. When she was having a particularly bad day, mental-illness wise, she’d talk in a squeaky baby voice. She’d say things like, “I fink I need ta poop. Make poopies, poopies.” “I wike buttersquasht. Do oo have any buttersquasht, Mr. Man?” Sometimes her baby talk would disintegrate into gibberish, “Widdle baby gonna weem. Dricky dela poo-poo weeeeem...” Like that. It was a little unnerving when she did that. She’d growl sometimes too.

     She told me once (on one of her more lucid days) that she wanted to teach a college course in, “Life’s Little Miracles” because most people never noticed them and she thought that was sad. “I see them all the time,” she said. “Like today, this morning. You woke up too early and couldn’t get back to sleep, right? And so you turned on the TV and that movie you always wanted to watch was just coming on. That’s a little miracle right there! Right?”

     She had no possible way of knowing any of that but what she said was true. For years I’d been meaning to see, Last Year at Marienbad and it came on that morning as soon as I’d turned on the TV.

     I don’t know if that qualifies as a miracle.

     But anyway, that’s one of the reasons I suspect she was telepathic.

 I know you want to click this.

Picking up on a vibe? 


 

LI'L DICKIE DUTCHBOY CHAPTER 4:

After Li'l Dickie Dutchboy finished the dishes, vacuumed, took out the trash and scrubbed the toilet, he trudged over to the toothless woman who had passed out on the couch. 

     "Ma'am? I'm done. Will you tell me who the killer is NOW?"      

     She opened her dim red eyes and slurred, "How the hell should I know?" 

     

"Holy jumpin' Moses!" cried Li'l Dickie Dutchboy. "I've been hornswoggled!"

To be continued...