getyourgoodnews/mylifeasafreakmagnet

Ever have the feeling you're a freak magnet?

Do you seem to draw weird people and odd, sometimes humiliating,
sometimes just bizarre circumstances to you?

If so, do I have the column for you.

This one, right here, if you haven't guessed.

I, my friends, am a freak magnet. I have been my whole life. So much so
that I wrote a book titled MY LIFE AS A FREAK MAGNET: TRUE
STORIES OF WEIRDOS I'VE MET, and I'm in the process of writing scripts
to bring that book to the stage and to the big screen.

But in the meantime, while I work on those, I continue to amass material for
a variety of sequels. In other words, folks, the freaks don't stop popping into
my life.

This column is going to relay those amusing and sometimes excruciating
stories. I hope you enjoy it.

And we'll start it off with...

Mrs. Bartman

Late afternoon. The shadows were starting to get long over the city asphalt. Commuters
buzzing the sidewalks, cars flooding the streets. Chicago. After a White Sox game -- a
loss, unfortunately -- and the el train was packed.

I was with a group of friends. High School. I was 17. Large group of people, guys, all
wearing Sox jerseys, t-shirts or other memorabilia. We had bought our tickets as a group,
and were now part of an even larger group, the strange melange of faces sardined in a
long metal box.

I linger on the image of myriad people to set up the odds of someone picking me out of the
crowd. Out of hundreds. Thousands. Me.

She was sitting across from us and down about 10 feet. Dressed like a Russian nesting
doll. Red shall pulled tight over a lavender house dress dappled with small white flowers,
two buttons straining against her sagging breasts and generous gut. She swam
somewhere in the nebulous pool between fifties and sixties, judging by the lines of her
face and the spots of her hands. Eyebrows like Bert from ``Sesame Street.'' Nose too.
She looked like the kind of woman who avoided cracks on the sidewalk, carried around
shanks of garlic to deflect evil and crossed herself in the presence of certain people.

Apparently, people like me.

Because out of all the people on the el train, all the faces young and old, black and white,
brown and olive, she greased a scowl on her face and pointed a crooked hand my way to
yell...

``Anchyman!''

Or, something that sounded like it.

``Huh?'' I said, looking around, as others looked to see who she was pointing at, while
hoping it wasn't them.

``Don't flick your tongue at me, Anchyman!'' she hissed, crossing herself. ``Forked tongue
Anchyman!''

``Hey, I think she likes you,'' my friend Chris said, laughing.

``You bastard, I'm so jealous,'' my friend Jon added.

``Anchyman!'' she screeched, still looking askance at me. ``Anchyman! You're trying to get
me! You're trying to capture me! Stop following me! Stop!''

``Hey, settle down,'' a large man nearby her, wearing a Sox jacket, said.

``Don't touch me! Dark seed! You're one of them too!''

Did I mention the big guy was black?

``Huh? What you talkin' about, you crazy old coot?''

She looked back at me again, reaching into her purse.

``You aren't going to hypnotize me!''

That's when she pulled out something that looked like one of those long dishrag-type
things that lay across the bottom of your door at the winter time, to keep the cold breezes
out. She yanked the rag thing to her right, elbowing the woman next to her, who was
trying to ignore the whole thing and hide behind her newspaper, and started to wave it in
my direction.

``You won't get me!''

``Fine by me,'' I said, alternately laughing and being freaked out. ``You're not my type
anyway.''

``Don't flick your tongue at me, Anchyman!''

At that point, my friends started to really crack up.

``Anchyman? Is that like some superhero or something?'' Jon asked.

``Aaaaaaah!'' she howled, as she waved her rag in my direction. ``Anchyman!''

I made the sign of the cross in the air, as if exorcising her. ``Demons begone,'' I said, in a
deep voice, ``in the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit.''

``Aaaaaaah! Anchyman cursed me with the Roman feast! Anchyman cursed me with the
Roman feast!'' she bellowed.

Jon was literally doubled over, his face red, tears streaming from his eyes. ``Roman
feast... what, is that like something from the Olive Garden?''

``Aaaaaah! Roman feast! Roman feast!'' the old woman screeched, finally pushing the tall,
professional woman in a suit next to her over the edge.

``Bitch, shut the fuck up!'' the suit woman exhorted.

``Reptile!'' the old woman yelled at her new target. ``Lizard! Lizard face!''

``Bitch, you better shut your fucking mouth with that lizard face shit, or I'm gonna...''

``Aaaaaaah! Lizard! Lizard!''

A brief scuffle ensued, with the older lady and the younger exchanging angry bumps and
the older woman flying into a tizzy, sending her huge satchels slung around her shoulders
zipping about, flinging spare change and bits of paper and detritus at annoyed
passengers.

At that point, the large black man stepped between them and another man, an older guy
with short, gray hair, who identified himself as an off-duty police officer, intervened,
leading the older woman to the back of the train car, through the crowd.

``Don't touch me! Don't touch!'' she screamed, waving her glad rag at anyone who dared
to look at her. ``Lizard man! Lizard!''

Her words drifted off as she moved away from us, and pretty much everyone who had
witnessed the grand event started to laugh.

``Hey, look,'' one guy said to his friend, as they both bent over to pick up change the
woman had spewed out in her spasm.

``Man, she dropped a bunch of shit,'' another guy said, pointing out a handful of junk that
had fallen out of her purse-things.

``Look at this,'' another guy said, picking up a small, oddly shaped object. ``Freakin' weird!''

It looked like something you'd find on a keychain. A miniature head of Ernie Banks,
complete with Cubs hat, only Ernie's face, hair and shoulders had been painted entirely
gold, and then his face had been given a nail polish makeover that made him look like Dee
Snyder of Twisted Sister.

The Cubs hat was untouched, with one exception -- within the red ``C'' was painted an
eyeball. One black pupil surrounded by a circle of white.

My friend Chris took one look at it, shook his head, scowled, and waved a hand
dismissively at the object.

``Figures,'' he said. ``Cubs fan.''

copyright 2010 Sean Leary / for more writing see www.seanleary.com and
www.myspace.com/seanleary007