Mad dogs and crazy people!

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That’s what I have always attracted. I like people with quirks but after you get to know someone, their quirks become…umm…too quirky. Even for me. Here are some folks I’ve known along the way.

The free spirit – I met up with this old high school classmate ten years after we graduated. He had been a jock and I was not. The click distinction was gone. I had done well in business and he had been in the military. We dated a few times but nothing came of it. He had just come home from a tour of Viet Nam and was eligible for college at low rates. He was going to become an attorney. (Everyone was going to be an attorney back then. It was during the hippie days.) He considered himself unencumbered by time restraints. Think of it. He’s attending college but refuses to wear a watch. His life is full of time restraints as he needed to attend classes at certain times. (This was way before the internet and cell phones.) He would make me crazy because whenever we were together, he was always asking the time. Wear a damn watch! (BTW he changed courses and became a teacher. I’m guessing he missed too many law classes!)

The health food fanatic – I say that loosely. He believed in healthy eating to the extreme. No red meat. Mostly fruits and vegetables. Programmed eating. He preached it and made you crazy. I was on a boating weekend with friends and he was there. Yikes! He only ordered plain healthy food – fish, no seasonings with boiled potatoes. Plain, plain, plain. The rest of us ordered whatever we wanted. Mostly seafood with the required butter or sauces, salads with dressings, etc. He ate off of everyone else’s plate (but mine – I already had his number!). He had a whole meal of food he considered unhealthy but he didn’t pay for it. I confronted him on it and he said that “tasting” (seriously he was doing more than tasting!) satisfied him so that he didn’t “stray” from his diet. One friend had a fried shrimp meal. There were six shrimp and he ate three. Is that a taste? Stayed away from that dude! Eat my food and I’ll fork your hand so you’ll never play piano again.

“I says what I think” friend – Yep, had one of those too. She felt her strength was to tell you what she thought no matter what. However, she never did it unless you weren’t in earshot. Confrontation comes hard for everyone but sometimes in a friendship you have to tell someone when they hurt your feelings. It’s a give and take. Nope, she didn’t. Sometimes she didn’t talk to you for six months and you had no idea why. When you would learn (through someone else), you would scratch your head because someone else did whatever she wasn’t talking to you about. I call that a gone friend.

Have a story you want to share? You must have had at least one weirdo in your life. If you’re lucky you never married them!

 

57 thoughts on “Mad dogs and crazy people!”

  1. I just grew a little uncomfortable. I wonder if I’m one of those people? LOL! I do like quirky people and I have a number of friends that fit the profiles you’ve mentioned. Maybe I’m the same way? I did once make friends with a woman I later realized was actually mentally ill. It was kind of sad, but also pointed out that maybe I’m a little too open and not discerning enough. I do seem to have a very high tolerance level. Now you’ve got me thinking, Kate. I wonder…

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    • There is no doubt that all interesting people have their quirks. I watched an interview with Emma Thompson and immediately loved her. She is my alter ego and very proud of her quirks! I tend to be “nice” and welcoming so I’ve had my share of weirdo (that’s different from quirky) friends that I had to disengage. These three were over the top for me but I do love friends with quirks. They are more interesting.

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    • Yes, we all have them! It’s funny how people go through friends. The last story especially. We were friends for about 15 years, off and on (there were times she wasn’t talking to me but I didn’t know) but she had that same kind of friendship with others. When she was off with me she was on with another. We were like shampoos. Which one will I use today?

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  4. I had to look up the definition of quirky after this post because I thought the people you wrote about were annoying and rude. Under the definition there are questions, one of which is “What is a quirky personality?”… “Quirky” is someone who is interesting and unique– someone who is odd that ‘s not off putting.” That is my description or thought of a quirky person. I embrace quirky people but annoying people not so much. The food thief, annoying and rude… your description of the food thief, how you felt about his food thievery made me laugh. Luckily, the friends I have that I consider quirky are endearing and I enjoy having them in my life. Parsimonious… my word for the day!

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  6. Laughed so much at this (and there comments)
    Weird and odd is a lot more common than people want to admit…so “normal” is not really possible?
    No wonder it’s so hard to find common ground…everyone is so busy telling others how uncommon they are…like the don’t throw stones at glass windows if your own are glass (and need some windex? HAHA)
    I don’t share food. I had an older brother who was the bottomless pit at meal time. Want a taste, get, your own. (Funny story, my dad did have a fork scar where he tried to snatch a bite off his older and only sister’s plate…poor girl – 5 brothers – all pranksters and jokers)

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  7. I don’t think I would’ve called those “quirks” of the people you described. I think I’d call them psychological issues. 😉 That last one, passive-aggressive much?

    For a long time I tended to attract eccentric people. I often called myself a down-to-earth eccentric, so maybe that’s why. However, lately that hasn’t happened as much. Maybe because these days I’m leaning more toward the down-to-earth side of me than the eccentric.

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    • The last one was truly passive-aggressive. She was a friend for a long time until I finally cut her loose. I have always found eccentric people very interesting because some “quirks” or whatever you chose to call it are grounded in something. The health freak was a few years older than the social group he was in and I am convinced he had a fear of dying. Perhaps Mr. Free Spirit was rebelling from a few years of military service. You never can tell. Of course I’m guessing here.

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      • I had a friend I had to cut loose years ago, too. We were friends for about 15 years. She always had some crisis or another, from something tiny to something huge. It didn’t matter, because they were all huge to her. She loved talking smack about people, too. When I cut her loose, she sent me a nasty letter for “abandoning her.” Looking back now, and knowing her history (about her upbringing), I can see how she turned out that way, but there IS such a thing as therapy. IOW, she didn’t ever learn and grow. 😛

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        • Our ending was so abrupt (the event was that she didn’t show up for dinner I made for the two of us) that I wonder if she thinks she cut me loose. Either way I’m OK. Some friendships do not last forever. My bestie from high school died a few years back and another really great friend of 40 years has some very debilitating illnesses. My current active friends only go back 20 years or so.

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          • The one I cut loose . . . I stopped picking up her calls and responding to emails. Sometimes she’d call me 3 times a day to complain about things. I couldn’t take the “all about me” attitude.

            My heart goes out to you in losing your bestie from H.S. It’s must be difficult not to have either of those friends around like you used to.

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  8. I don’t think any of those attributes (though that may be the most-flattering description for them) belong to Yours Truly, but I have known a few strange friends like that in my life too. I once dated a guy in college who only took me out for dinner in places where he had a coupon for buy one, get one free … my mom thought that was a nice attribute and he had learned to master his money at a young age. My grandmother, however, even though she lived in Canada, when she heard about the “Coupon Clipper” as she called him, had a different opinion of him. I one time got an envelope in the mail that was a pile of coupons and a message – “here you are Linda, in case Dave ever decides to come over to Canada and take you to dinner … these are coupons good for all the local fast-food places” … he ended up being a lawyer, but I’ve not seen him since we both graduated from community college.

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    • I have friends who do the dinner coupon thing. For a college student I can understand but for working people to be obsessive about it is silly. I love your grandmother and just because he’s a lawyer now doesn’t mean he isn’t still parsimonious! (or cheap as my mom would say)

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      • My grandmother was a stitch Kate and I have never heard that word parsimonious and I’ll have to remember that one. My boss is a wordsmith and loves to use unusual words. I’ll test it out on him. I can’t really fault this guy I dated to be honest. While attending college, Dave worked summers for his father’s construction firm and worked weekends during the school year as a busboy at a Italian banquet hall. We only went out a half-dozen times and he’d say “let’s go out to dinner; where would you like to go?” I’d say “why don’t you pick and he’d drag out the coupons” … it just seemed a little cheesy to me, especially since I was no gold digger. 🙂

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  10. I knew someone like your health food friend. He would bore everyone for hours on end about vitamins, processed foods, the evils of red meat, etc. Then one day I went to his house and managed to sneak a peek into his pantry. I saw bags of potato chips (Fritos! The worst of the worst!) and Hostess products. I knew then he was a hypocrite. – Marty

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  11. I remember – many, many years ago – a guy (who I sort of knew) asked me out… then never showed up. A few years later I saw him again, he apologized, made some plausible excuse (I was young and wanted to believe him, I guess), and asked me out again. Yep… he never showed up again. I guess I’m the idiot.

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  12. Wow. That food-thief would have never made it to a second date. I grew up with too many siblings and not enough food. I’d’ve gone feral and bitten his hand.

    I did date some other winners, though. The cheater who picked up another woman at my office Christmas party definitely stands out.

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  13. I knew the person who always wanted to taste everyone else’s food. Made me crazy when he asked. He would start tasting others before he tasted his own. He tried that with me once. He stopped after he had to find neosporin and and a bandaid. So annoying.

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  16. I can’t think of a real friend who had habits annoying enough to write about. The awful thought just hit — maybe I’M THE ONE who is the weird friend!!! Several times I suggested that we set a time limit if I saw a neighbor sitting on the porch and joined her. I have a habit of chatting far too long. and I don’t catch any sign that it’s time to leave. That’s why I kept telling you we would stay only an hour, so you’d know the end was in sight before the visit began. Yes, I’m sure I’m the crazy person. Watch out, world. Here I come!

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    • These people are not really friends but were “friends in training” not making the cut. Perhaps your quirk is that you are so considerate of others that you deny them your effervescent personality by limiting yourself. One time when I lived in New Jersey, one of my neighbors invited me for lunch. I was new and it was a “get to know each other” lunch. We chatted and chatted and all of sudden it was 3 p.m. and I was mortified. We did get to be really good friends. We always had a lot to talk about but I was more cognizant of the time.

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  17. I married them. I dated them. If only they were just health food freaks that would have been easy. I guess there’s something about me that attracts them and is attracted to them no matter what I do, so I have decided to be alone.

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    • Some of them are quite nice at the beginning. The food freak was charming and I admired his dedication to being healthy. I never dated him though. Eventually I found that he would evangelize and was judgmental to those who didn’t change. When I found him stealing “bad” food, that was it! We were all in our 40s at the time.

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  18. Isn’t amazing how people are so oblivious of their weird social behaviors? Sometimes I worry that I’m one of those people. Because if they can’t see it… Maybe I don’t see it in myself? It’s a freaky thought better left alone. But maybe that’s what they think!!!! gaaaah.

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    • I have a handle on some of my weird social behaviors but I’m sure I have more than I admit. Some of them are grounded in something real. I’m weird about where I sit or go. I’m sensitive to cold. I can stick out in a crowd because I’m the one with a hoodie on when it’s 80 degrees. I too often wonder if people realize how crazy they are. Especially the health food freak. I told him he was weird but he blew me off because facts backed up his eating style. He didn’t realize it wasn’t what he ate but how annoying he was about it.

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  20. While dating in my early twenties, I remember telling my best friend that I must have “Weirdos Welcome” stamped on my forehead. I could write a book…stalkers, liars, beggars, psychos…you name it, they’d ask me out. Thankfully, Derek didn’t fall into any of those categories. 🙂

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    • OMG! Relatives! There was always a drunk at a reunion and always a fight. Fortunately those were the days of my youth and more distant relatives. My more immediate family is not a group of big drinkers!

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  22. I knew a health food warrior too… he always had homemade shakes and proteine drinks in his car. he once confused it with my bottle un UNHEALTHY POISONOUS sprite, shaked it like crazy and opened the cap…. what a fountain!!!! that was it then… thanks sprite you rescued my life in many ways…..

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