Talk to Yourself

I learned a valuable truth this afternoon: If you're weird, people will leave you alone. We've all been walking through a mall or a grocery store or some event and seen the guy that is weird. You know the guy... something tells you that you just want this guy to keep on walking.

I was in the grocery store this afternoon and was confronted by this guy. I spied him coming up the aisle and knew he was the guy. I pretended to be calculating the price per ounce of powered Gatorade versus Powerade when he accosted me. "Looks like we're in for some weather this evening, huh", he said. I considered explaining that we always have weather whether it's good or bad but I let it slide. "Yeah, they can put a man on the moon but they can't stop this white stuff from falling out of the sky." (a line I lifted from an episode of Family Ties) As he was thinking, I Michael Johnson-ed myself to the chip aisle.

I then realized that maybe if I where that guy, people would leave me alone. So I started talking to myself as a little experiment. And it worked! I was mumbling about work and sometimes pretended to have a baby in my cart and people avoided me like the plague. It was awesome.

I was so into it that I found myself doing it at the check out. The lady said "I'm sorry, sir, were you talking to me?" "No," I said, "I was just talking to myself. I do it all the time."