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But soon realized it was a severely mentally ill woman who was hurling epithets at an imaginary enemy.
This just about always works:
"Hi! My name is Mike. What's yours?"
I am often - but not always - able to make Schizophrenics stop hallucinating. But my new friend turned away then refused to speak.
"Who's that that you're talking to? You seem pretty angry with them." But she steadfastly tightened up her irritated pout.
"It's OK to be angry when someone mistreats us."
At times during our one-sided conversation she would curse at her enemy again, but not at all at me.
Having just now gotten up from my seat on the train - actually light rail, but to actually spell out "light rail" feels burdensome - I'm pretty sure I really did sit in that woman's piss.
She and I went back and forth this way until I heard someone say "Have a good evening". Without looking away from my new friend I replied the same.
"Hey Sir!" I heard them say again, then looked up to see a young man smiling broadly while giving me a thumbs up. "Have a good evening!"
I smiled as well then returned his thumbs up.
Now I have a question for you lot:
I recently mentioned to an emergency room nurse that I do this kind of thing. "I could never do that," she replied, quite astonished.
That nurse deals on a regular basis with the ground up "Tastes Like Pork" that the Emergency Medical Technicians deliver to her ER. Surely people die in her care because they are ground up far too severely for her and her coworkers to save them.
Mom's father was a doctor she always wanted me to be one too, but I could never watch my patients die.
Yet chatting up the totally demented is no problem for me, none at all.
I am unable to reconcile that ER nurse's reaction to what I do just as easy as writing "Hello World".
What's your take?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday November 21 2018, @04:26AM (1 child)
https://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/browse-by-state/washington [treatmentadvocacycenter.org]
Damn, that's a lot of schizophrenics.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday November 21 2018, @04:58AM
Among the population in general, about one percent are schizophrenic, however that is rather more than the also one percent that are manic depressive - again among the general public.
However it's not all bad news: not all mentally ill people are chronically symptomatic. My own illness is "episodic", that is, the symptoms come and go.
Even were we symptomatic, not all of us need to be in the hospital, the criterion loosely speaking is whether we're better off leading our lives outside, or whether we'd be better off in the hospital. My impression so far is that there are enough hospitals in both Washington and Oregon, in that I've never been turned away from one, however in Portland specifically there aren't enough outpatient psychiatrists. Vancouver has plenty of them.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday November 21 2018, @05:02AM (7 children)
It's not so much about my heart this time round, rather it's taking better care of the one kidney I've got left: This because high blood pressure will destroy one's kidneys without any noticeable symptoms until it's a choice between a transplant or dialysis.
My blood pressure has been chronically high, but I'm also fifty pounds over weight. Feel Free: "LOL Fatty!".
Just now I went to 7-Eleven bent on buying a tub of ice cream - not just a pint, but I think it would have been a quart or so - but instead, after wrestling with the demon on my left shoulder as the angel on my right encouraged my insistence that I not get ice cream, I bought a sausage sandwich instead.
That also cost less money than the ice cream would have.
Even so, I remained fiending for sugar, so when I got home I ate a can of pineapple chunks. Just as much sugar as ice cream if not actually more, but I can at least _pretend_ the pineapple was more nutritious.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday November 21 2018, @07:35PM (6 children)
If possible, see about getting all sugar out of your diet. I've been following (mostly...) a ketogenic plan for about 2 months, and it broke me through my plateau; I'm 146 lb at 5'10" now and, this is both good and bad, am too small for nearly all my clothes.
You find after about a month you simply don't want sugar, and if you do eat it, you feel like shit. Do it clean: too many people think "keto diet" means "a pound of fatty bacon and 4 eggs for breakfast every morning." Nope. Lots of the cheapest greens you can find, canned sardines for cheap, lots of plain black tea, etc. It's hard to do as cheap as something like a vegetarian diet because *all* carbs aside from what you get from greens are verboten, but it's not tooooo bad if you're careful.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Snow on Wednesday November 21 2018, @07:41PM (4 children)
If there is such a thing as an unsexy food... canned sardines would be it.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday November 21 2018, @09:09PM (3 children)
I never knew there was a such thing as food sex appeal. Sounds like a way to get a nasty infection...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Snow on Wednesday November 21 2018, @10:20PM (2 children)
Chocolate covered strawberries = Sexy.
Anchovies from a tin = Unsexy.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday November 21 2018, @10:56PM (1 child)
Putting either near your vagina = infection. Food and sex do not mix.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 22 2018, @11:11AM
Perhaps George Costanza can persuade you [youtube.com] to reconsider food in bed?
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday November 22 2018, @05:25AM
And in fact I lost quite a lot of weight.
Right now the problem is that the one grocery store I can easily walk to has a very poor selection of fresh vegetables. But I'm planning to get a car in the spring.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by Snow on Wednesday November 21 2018, @05:32PM (1 child)
You did a good thing for that lady, Mike. You are a good person.
You reeled us in with the urine hook, and then failed to deliver. Did you sit in her piss? It couldn't have been that stale. If it was hers, it presumably would have been fresh.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday November 22 2018, @05:28AM
My pants don't smell today however before I leave my place I'll change them
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]