MY RETARDED FRIEND!

A little while back I blogged about my new ENEMY: A mentally and fecally challenged man who hates my guts because I scolded him for not letting a man have the seat next to him. Boy do we ever hate each other's guts. Well it seems the universe works in mysterious ways because shortly after deciding to make this retarded man my enemy, the cosmos almost instantaneously manifested for me a retarded friend! Her name is Nicky.

My new friend Nicky!

I was on my way home from work and I'd just got off the Skytrain and grabbed a connector bus. This isn't the station I usually transfer from but today I tried a new route. So I took my seat and immediately a woman says "Hello" to an older lady seated two seats away from me. The older lady responds politely and I think maybe they know each other. Then the woman says "Hello" to me and sits down between the older lady and myself. I respond politely and realize that this woman is mentally challenged when she says to me "What's your name?" "I'm Johnny, what's yours?" "I'm Nicky! So John where are you going?" "Ah...home." "Where's that John?" "Oh...um...about a kilometer from here." "How far is a kilometer John?" "Hmmmm. About 1000 meters." "So where you going John?" "I'm going home." "Where's that John?" "It's about a thousand meters from here. Where are you going Nick?" "I'm going home. Where are you going John?" That is pretty much exactly it word-for-word. At this point I realized that this conversation's a tad lack-luster so I go back to my music and play the solitaire game on my iPod. As I listened to my music I was aware that Nicky was talking but I couldn't hear what she was saying when suddenly, after about a minute, she's poking me. I pull off the headphones "Yeah?" "WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU JOHN?" "Pardon?" "What's wrong John? I've been talking to you!" "Oh, sorry I was listening to my music. What were you saying?" "Where are you going John?" "ohhhh...home..." and I slowly put my headphones back on. At this point she gets up and moves across and takes a seat facing me, smiling occasionally. Finally my stop arrives and I get up smile and say "See ya Nicky!" to which she replied "Where are you going John?"

When I was growing up, our family friends up the road had a retarded son Peter who was just a few years older than me. Though he'd past puberty many years ago, and his voice had dropped, he repressed this deeper voice and held onto a higher more child-like voice. Occasionally this voice would crack and suddenly a deep-voiced word or two would creak out of his mouth. It was awkward to listen to. One Thanksgiving dinner a bunch of families got together to have a nice dinner at a semi-posh restaurant. One of the fathers had just finished saying grace when Peter, in his high, squeaky voice, quite loudly said, "OH BOY! WHO CUT THE CHEESE?!"