Sunday, May 1, 2016

The Banana Peel Serial Killer

Since I received that cease and desist letter taped to my front door by my neighbor, I have had one very awkward encounter. I put his note on here under "The Banana Peel Incident." Shortly after that happened, I bought a new smartphone with text message ability. Recently my texting abilities were revoked.

I sound like a kid. I can't text anymore. It's a bad function for someone with no current job and too much time on her hands. I always feel like I should be drunk when I'm texting. It's just too easy to reach people. When a thought pops up, I grab my phone and share it. Not always clear and concise information. There is more then an electronic pong game going on in my head I'm sure. Insanity has nothing to do with intelligence. Intelligence makes insanity worth sharing for entertainment purposes only.

Before I got my text messaging revoked because of misuse, I wrote the author of the banana peel letter a lot of text messages. He was a good friend of mine for over a year and I was trying to reconnect with him. At the very least, I wanted to suppress any irrational fears on either of our parts so throwing the trash away would be hassle-free.

Long story short, I was taking out the trash a few days ago and I ran into him while he was standing next to the only community trash can while talking to a middle aged woman. They both ran like chickens without heads in separate directions and left me scratching my head.

The power of avoidance moves me to accomplish great things. I stopped drinking and started attending alcoholic's anonymous because this banana peel fearing neighbor (Ian) was an outspoken recruit and he chain smokes next to the only community trash compactor. Its annoying. I started piling up my trash to avoid him. Then I tried to get brave by mentally mapping out times he smoked and correlate when I could safely be out and about. I hid behind a parked car once to avoid him. He eventually ambushed me. Now I'm sober.

He is a lawyer by training, and he's also a modern day Rain Man. He can memorize numbers; he knew my whopping four digit apartment number for a good six months before taping a note to the door. I know he has some form of autism. I really liked the guy a lot. Which is why I kept texting him (with no reply) to please talk this out; at least for the sake of my trash pile-up depression. I warned him by text message just days before this happened; that one day I might run into him and it would be awkward.

I had a thirty pound bag of used cat litter in one hand and a little shopping bag with lint (for all I know, one neurotic tick of mine is picking up cigarette butts, and type of trash; I like the woods to be free of litter.) I saw him talking to a woman and I started to turn around. But I noticed he could see me, and I did not want him to feel like he could bully me and I had to be fearful. So my gait switched from causal stroller to angry power walk and I went for it! I walked right up to him and this woman with my trash in hand (smelly urine soaked cat litter...oh man...I'm already called the crazy cat woman by many) and I yelled, "This is what I mean by an awkward meeting!"

Now, I can only assume what he said to that woman when my ears were ringing as I touched the trash can as if it was my safe home base, but after the trash went in, I calmed myself down and slowly turned around to see them running helter skelter in separate directions. He is at least six feet tall. I'm a puny little nerd; the type of person that was the last to be picked in every grade school sports event. When by default I was put on someone's volley ball team, the ball would bounce right in front of me, or hit my head as I was looking at the clock on the wall to see how much more gym class I'd have to take. I peed my pants in gym class once because I could not stop laughing. My shorts never fit my hips and the elastic was not tight enough to keep them from falling down. I'm not a butt crack girl. I'm a pancake no-butt girl who gets hit in the side of the head by soccer-volley-kick all types of balls. That makes classmates double over in laughter that I analyze for the next four grades with a secret deep seeded resentment that one day comes out in a $200 therapy session as the root cause for why I did in fact inhale.

There goes my political career.

To find a person from the same culture who fears me is...awesome! But definitely a mistaken emotion that is completely wasted on someone like me. I am far more fearful of him. I don't have the nerve to tape a note on anyone's door accusing them of harboring a murderous intent via banana peel. That's fucking crazy.

And it is refreshing for me to label a duck a duck and a crazy note just that when the subject is about random banana peels causing intentional pain for my, 'entertainment and giggles'. No one in any of our mutual circles has laughed about this entire thing. They are actually trying to understand him. Not me. The man is afraid of a banana peel and a 120 pound woman whose arm has never bent a tiny amount when I had to attempt a chin-up in school. Throughout my entire painfully mandatory gym class career my arm has never moved a minuscule amount when forced to try for a chin-up. My arm has never slightly bent.

He is afraid of me?

The woman ran one way, he ran the opposite way and hid behind his truck. My heart sank when I saw that. I'm human and that hurt my feelings. I composed myself and aimed my walk intentionally at him to confront him and tell him to stop this craziness. But when I took that first step in his direction from the trash compactor to him, he took off with more running, and this time a fast sprint out of sight.

About an hour after that, I received a text message from someone whose apartment window faced the parking lot this took place in. The cryptic message implied that I am a bully. I have been throwing away my trash at 3am for the past two weeks. I got brave...and threw away the trash in broad daylight. I am in my isolated apartment (with insomnia and blankets tacked to the windows) so often lately, when I come out and people scatter like that, I am left to try to make sense out of nonsense. Which is why I am writing this down. Now it's down and its out of my mind. There is no sense to be made of it.

I should buy a large banana costume and wear it to take out the trash. Things could not get more bizarre then they already have over nothing.

That's all I have for today.