Bob

I couldn't sign on last evening and it was very odd. I never imagined myself becoming addicted to a blog, talking mostly to myself, but I guess ultimately that's what we do. Thought patterns are so interesting... The ways we can shift our minds about things...

But back to talking to myself. It makes me think about Bob, this guy, a transient who wanders around the city bumming money and smokes. We call him Jibber-Jabber because of the way he talks to himself, it sounds just like that toy ~ I found a picture of one on Ebay. Now Bob doesn't look like that.. well, maybe a little bit, but he's not that clean shaven. And I've never seen him wear a tie. But he does wear a headset sometimes ~ those little knobs on either side of Jibber-Jabber's head, if you tilt your head the right way, kind of look like earphones.

He'll see me on my bike or putting gas in my car (yeah he's got his charity cronies)...and he'll say,"Hey."
I'll go, "Hey Bob what's up?"
Then he's like, "Uhhh, not much, not much.." Then he'll look around like he is conducting a serious drug deal or stolen property exchange or something, and then pat his breast pocket and say in his charming toothless lisp, "Ya got any change..."

Sure, ofcourse, I do.....

Nick came in the other night and said something about him and I said, "I haven't seen Bob for awhile, how's he been?" Ol' Jibberjabber pretty regularly has bruises on his face or he's disheveled probably from muggings or something, but he keeps walking back and forth down that busy highway from the bigger city to our town, jibberjabbering. Anyhow Nicholas said, "He looked pretty good. For Bob." Nick gave him some cigarettes.

So we've made up this story about Bob to keep Bob interesting, in mythic proportions. Since he wears a green army jacket we say that he's a vet who did too much acid in Viet Nam which made him go muy loco, because he lost his woman and the love-child they had before he left for his tour of duty in a fiery crash when she swerved her Vega to avoid a possum on the freeway, her little car flying across the median, dead on to meet her (and her little baby's) maker in the grill of a Kenworth 18-wheeler. Bob left the horrors of the war and came back to Ohio a changed man, not unlike that of Tom Cruise in "Born on the Fourth of July." Minus the Mexican whores. And the peyote. And the mescal. ....Oh, and ofcourse the spinal cord injury... But ANYhow, he now wanders the streets looking for her totalled Vega and his jibber jabber cries out for his lost.....lover and .. their little bundle, their... son.

One time I rode my bike past him on the path, I was slowing down to the stop sign and I said, "Hi Bob" and I swear I heard him say... yes, I thought he jibberjabbered, "Man... I'd like to jump on that..." But I'm sure it was really his torment calling out, "I'd like to jump off a bridge and end all this..."

Actually Bob was born the way he is, shuffled around the system, eventually being diagnosed schizophrenic and like most people in the state hospital was turned out into a halfway house to try to lead as normal a life as possible. For Bob. It's turned out really not too interesting of a story, spending his life in and out of hospitals and jail ~ he's just one of many, many; one of thousands of Joe Schmo Pyschos.

As a city, we're lucky to have had the funds to have halfway houses though because I can remember when Pittsburgh turned out their mentally ill, they went to the street. But it's still sad really, because these houses are purchased in run-down, higher crime areas because the suburbs and the wealther neighborhoods don't want them or their ilk. I guess I understand that, too; but it puts the already vulnerable in very vulnerable circumstances. Bob was telling me one time when I was asking about his bruises that he got jumped for a carton of smokes. (They are becoming a very high commodity... at $3 a pack they can sell them now for half that and make some money for beer or pot or whatever).

But so much courage..., he just keeps going, wandering and jibberjabbering.

I have found though that getting to know the reality of Bob transcends the myth. What he's become in the time I've taken to understand him is a neighbor, a local. Sort of a friend. Just human. Or, well, at least it makes me want to stop and give him my pocket change.


(Addendum: Now, thinking on this for a minute, I don't know if Bob meant he'd like to jump on me or... my bike. By golly, I think he meant my bike! Hmph.)