Out of Place

 I don't know if I'm going to explain this properly, but lately I've been thrown off by seeing people in the wrong place.  I'm one coincidence away from hiring Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin.

  First, there's the guy I have affectionately dubbed Weirdo.  At least once a week without fail, I see this tall, skinny guy walking along the side of the road with a grimace on his face, carrying a giant black garbage bag.  Sometimes, it's a small yellow bag, but he's always going somewhere and he is never empty-handed.  I suppose the simple explanation would be that he doesn't own a car and he's going to do his laundry or something, but come on!  We have plenty of buses around here.  Makes me think he's got something to hide.  Maybe he's disposing of body parts and no one notices because he's just some weirdo walking down the street.

  Anyway, I saw this guy in the wrong place yesterday and I almost did a double take.  He was outside the bank fiddling with the lid of a mailbox- you know, that thing you do to make sure your envelope didn't get stuck.  Only he was doing it over and over like he had never seen a mailbox before and was looking for the magic post office fairies that had just swiped his letter.  Not to be politically incorrect, but I might change Weirdo's name to Retard.  Of course, I had to resist the urge to say, "Where's your garbage bag, man?"

  Wait...I'm not even going to start in on Giant Sombrero Guy.

  Then there's the even worse Out of Place phenomenon that I sometimes have to go through working in such a large place in such a small community.  That's seeing work people outside of work, and you have to pretend that you would like nothing better than to stop and chat for five or ten minutes just because the same signature is on your paycheck.  I'm not unfriendly- I'm really not!  But when I'm shopping, I'm trying to remember stuff I want to get- I don't want to talk about how slow or busy things are at work, or how terrible some managers are.  When I am not at work, I am not thinking about work and that's the way I likes it.

  So of course, at Wal-mart today, I saw someone I work with.  Or more accurately, works one area over from me.  Basically, we see each other all the time but have never actually spoken.  I braced for it-having to smile and say, "How's it going?" or something- I thought maybe for once, I wouldn't have to hear how much Wal-mart sucks since we don't really know each other, but still, we would have to acknowledge each other with a polite greeting, right? 

  Wrong!  We saw each other coming down opposite ends of the aisle and never made eye contact again.  She took her kid, turned and kept her back to me until she got what she needed and bolted out of there. 

  I have to say, that was much, much worse than smiling and saying hello.  I have two theories:  1) She must hate seeing people out of place and making small talk as much as I do.  2) I must look like I spend my afternoons carrying around a garbage bag full of body parts.