Fringe Benefits

As many of you know I am currently working several part time jobs teaching at three different community colleges here in the LA area. Two of the positions are near my home so I drive, but the other one (and the one which pays the best and where I have the most hours) is about 30 miles away beyond downtown LA. Because gas is expensive and I don't like fighting traffic, I ride the metro train there. This costs me a whopping total of $27 for a month pass so it is a big savings in gas even with a fuel efficient car.

But perhaps even better are the fringe benefits. I know you're thinking of things like reading or grading in the train and these are all nice, but the benefit I'm talking about is all the great conversations with CRAZY PEOPLE.

To be sure, I'm not refering to the crazy people who smell bad and wander around swearing under their breath at themselves. The ones I'm refering to usually start coming off about like my Uncle Bernell. (For those that don't know Bernell is a delightful man who loves to be the center of conversation. He is an excellent story teller and really only needs you to nod occasionally to keep the conversation going.)

Well, fairly often someone on the train or in the station comes around and just starts some conversation. Usually pretty benign and often interesting. This is no big deal as I do it too. (Of course I may be one of the crazy people.) But occasionally it takes a turn that I would never expect.

For example, last week I got to talking with a guy who seemed friendly enough, and when I asked him what he did he said he was a father figure for the USC football team. I assumed he was a retired coach who still hung around or something along those lines. The next thing I know he's explaining to me that the reason USC lost to Stanford (when I don't remember) was that he had gotten upset with the quarter back and walked out. Without him there the quarterback was so distraught he couldn't play. Before I know it he's explaining to me how Troy Aikman would never have made it in the NFL if he hadn't flown out at his own expense to give him a pep talk. He continued with these stories and complaining about how they never paid him anything out of gratitude until one of us had to get on or off of the train.

Yesterday was even more fun. Some guy comes and starts talking about Amtrak and some monthly pass they were offering. He said it stretched the entire continental US including Maine and Florida so I commented that it would take about a month to get from her to Maine and Florida on Amtrak. (Only a slight exageration. I think San Francisco to Chicago is about a week.) He kept on talking and then asked if I knew anything about nano-technology. I do in fact know a thing or two so I started to talk with him. Suddenly he is talking about how he signed a release for the government to implant a nano-chip in his brain to help with his manic-depression. At this point I'm cautious but not entirely certain that he is crazy. I don't claim to know about all therapies and a small chip that delivers microscopic shocks seemed like a conceivable experimental therapy. But when he started talking about how it was a "really good" "military quality" chip and that they had put micro-cameras in his eyes and he was filming everything he saw for a documentary, I knew he was over the edge.

I didn't have the heart to tell him that he probably had schizophrenia not bipolar and I mostly listened quietly as he told his stories. When he started asking about black holes I though maybe we could talk sense, but he mostly wanted to talk about time travel. (For the record, the evidence is getting stronger and stronger that no, you can't time travel, even with a black hole. Though Michio Kaku might say otherwise, I think he's a little out there himself.)

When he realized I wouldn't bite on the time-travel business, he asked the burly tatooed guy who he had originally started talking to and was now ignoring us. He actually had a good comment that in quantum mechanics nothing is impossible only ridiculously improbable. (In addition to crazy people you also meet people who know a lot more than you would expect at first blush. Riding the train is a good way to smash a lot of predjudices.)