Wednesday 13 November 2013

The trip

You read things. You hear stories. You think that all those random and interesting things happen to somebody else. And then, one dark cold night, there is a knock on your window. Right when all you want is to crawl into bed and go to sleep. In one of those rare moments when you seriously couldn't care less that interesting things don't seem to happen to you.

There it is. That interesting thing. That story you will be able to tell. But you don't know that yet. All you know is that it's after midnight and you want to sleep, but there is the knocking. So you go to check it out.

Ok, maybe you are a sensible person and you make a point of not opening your door to randomers late at night. Maybe that's something we all should start practicing.

But then again... If our door remained shut I wouldn't experience a conversation which easily gets a place in the Top Ten Weirdest Conversations of the Decade.

We opened the door to find one of our neighbours. Innocent enough. She wanted to come in for a minute and since she seemed a bit distressed we let her in. Like a bunch of knights in shining armours, saving her from the shadows of the night. We even offered her tea.

Ok, J. offered her tea. I'm rude and I don't offer people tea. Not even when they are in distress. I mean, we already let her in right? I was prepared to fight off any zombies if need be. That should be enough.

We assured her that it's ok to come in (mainly because she was already in) and asked what was wrong and if we could help (see, knights!). With each passing minute and each sentence it all became clearer and clearer.

She was high, tripping on acid like a goofy baby elephant trips over a strategically positioned log. Just less cute. A lot less cute in fact.

She told us things. There were amusing things, boring things and random things, but there were also things that we didn't really want to know.

You want for instance, you say? Well, we already knew that our darling neighbour is a fan of reggae as we can hear her and whatever music is playing through the walls. She told us she went to see the Wailers. Yes, THE WAILERS. Then she told us and showed us how she danced. So now we have her acid tripping, dancing and punching the air with her fist, shouting yeah-yeah, while holding a cup of tea in the middle of our very tiny living room. My third eye can see that tea going everywhere and managing to soak both sofas, the three of us and the printer.

But somehow, miraculously,  all the tea stays inside the mug and the neighbour progresses onto telling us just how, quote, erotically charged she was during that gig. Oh, did I mention she is about 50 years old? Puts things into perspective, doesn't it? We then get informed that she wanted to go backstage and get on with the band. And that she wanted to bring two of them home to have sex with (and yes, still quoting word for word). It was apparently very important that we understood it had to be two of them too. We didn't ask why.

Most of the conversation revolved around the variations of the above. We were also informed that she knows all the best places around to pick magic mushrooms (again, didn't ask) and were assured that since we are good people she will have a big house party before she moves away and that she will tell us where those mushroom-picking places are.

We also found out her general dislike for uniforms and police, were told she wouldn't let the police in under any circumstances because they would see her maize (once again, didn't ask). Oh, and the grass looked like an alien planet apparently. Looked normal to me, but what do I know, I don't have a maize growing in my bedroom and don't go magic mushroom hunting. My life is so ordinary.

The whole happening was rather draining. She was going from uber-excited to depressed in a matter of seconds, swapping from jumping around and an excessive amount of hugging to throwing her hands over her head and crying. My facial muscles got a real workout that night - have you ever been in a situation where you have to keep switching between a happy/excited face and a sympathetic/serious face? About half way through the visit I wasn't even sure what my face was doing anymore, as soon as I forced a smile on she would start crying and then my brain would freeze for a split second and go into an overdrive, desperately thinking make a sad face, sad face! NOW! and trying to figure out how on earth one makes a sad face.

We have managed to finally calm her down enough to start directing her towards the door. We had to promise that we will keep all the windows shut, since she was absolutely convinced that someone will get into our house through one of the cracked windows, then get into my housemate's room and then get into her house (she skipped the bit where our houses are separated by a solid concrete wall, but nevermind). Once they get into her house they will go to her bedroom and torture her. Because that's what robbers do, they squeeze through barely opened windows, float through walls and torture people.

There is a life lesson for you there somewhere.