Let me begin with a disclaimer. I am going to use a term that many would consider a pejorative towards innocent people that don’t deserve it. Some of my readers will consider what I am going to say in this column to be unnecessarily mean, cruel, and rude. The offending word is zombie and I will be using it as a sort of broad brush to describe any number of types of individuals in our society who are not normal, healthy human beings. I just ask that you try to resist the urge to overreact to my using the term as I am not trying to name-call; likewise, I do not believe in literal zombies – revived and semi-animated corpses that roam the countryside seeking for human prey like we saw in Michael Jackson’s famous “Thriller” video back in the 1980s.
It is becoming clearer and clearer to me that there is a pandemic of mental illness or just plain aberrant behavior in many people. I do not have in mind the many people who suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome, which I maintain is a real mental illness that causes otherwise rational people to abandon rationality and instead embrace psychopathic fury every time the name or image of Donald Trump confronts them. I’ve written about TDS many times in this column, and I am not trying to revisit that theme at this time. Instead, I have in mind people that are scattered throughout society who walk among us and work alongside us. They are not institutionalized, and they probably should be. It’s eye-opening, to say the least, to realize you may be walking among people that you do not realize are really not well, but have serious issues.
Story time: Some time ago, I responded to an advertisement of a room for rent. I needed a room to rent and I wanted to go that route rather than get my own apartment or condo simply to save money. The homeowner I called on was a woman in her late 50s. The room for rent was a nice room, unfurnished, and came with a private bathroom, kitchen use, use of the swimming pool, and it would just be me and her. As I generally keep to myself in such situations, and strive to stay out of the homeowner’s way, I figured it would be great just to have a place to crash at night, a bathroom to shower in each morning, etc. Things went well for the duration of our first 12-month contract, so I re-signed a new contract for a second year.
Less than a month into that second year, things went south very quickly.
On one Saturday, I came home from errands and found my bedroom door open. (I always, without fail, kept it closed.) I also found a hand-written note the homeowner left on the kitchen counter. Assuming it was left for me, I read the note. It read as follows: “Steve: Go f*ck yourself. Signed, Sharon.” (Sharon is not the homeowner’s actual name). I figured that Steve, whoever he is, must be a contractor of some kind, perhaps a painter, or an AC Repairman, or something similar, and had fallen out of the good graces of Sharon. Sharon, at that time, had been out of the house running errands herself, but when she returned, I asked if she had gone into my room for some reason. She denied it and asked, somewhat defensively, “Why would I?” I then looked at the note on the counter, and I gave a nervous chuckle, and asked her who Steve was.
She replied: “You are.”
The environment changed instantly and I felt the blood drain out of my face. Now I was really nervous and on high alert. . .
“I’m Steve?” I asked. She replied: “Yes, you are Steve! And I know all about you, Steve!” Her voice was getting shrill. She went on: “And you work for the CIA! And you kicked me in the shins yesterday and mockingly laughed at me!” I was stunned. She wasn’t finished. She asked me, accusingly, “What’s that in your eye, Steve?” as if she detected a hidden camera in my eye. Then, pointing first to her own temple and then to her own eye, she asked, “And what is that, Steve?!”
I told her she needed to calm down and get a grip, and that she was having a psychotic break from reality. I also was mindful that there were sharp kitchen knives right nearby and she seemed to be glancing in their direction. I determined that if she grabbed them and lunged at me, I would have to launch a crushing side kick to the inside of her knee joint which would cripple her. I hoped and prayed it would not come to that.
Ultimately, she shrieked at me, “I am not comfortable with you in my house and I want you out!” I replied, “Well now our objectives are aligned. . .” I spent the night in a hotel and moved out the next day. And she told me I owed her over $10,000 based on the new contract we had just signed weeks earlier; she actually felt I owed her for more than 11 months of future rent payments on a contract she herself had violated.
For all intents and purposes, Sharon is a zombie. She can’t work. She can’t function. She can’t even maintain the only source of income she had – my rent payments. Sharon is doomed to homelessness if she doesn’t get on the necessary medication and take it regularly, as well as get regular professional counseling.
But Sharon is not an anomaly.
Space in this column will prevent me from disclosing at least a dozen or more stories I have on the tip of my tongue that are analogous to Sharon’s zombie-like proclivities. These people are all around us. They drive cars. They park next to us. The shop alongside us at the supermarket. They are in line with us at the Post Office. The sometimes are working out at the same fitness center as us. They may live next door to us. Some of them may even share an adjoining cubicle at our place of employment.
The world is full of zombies – abnormal people who may or may not be mentally ill, but who have strange views, peculiar habits, crazy beliefs. They are not necessarily criminal. They are not necessarily given to strange behavior 24/7. But if you push the right (or wrong) buttons, they will enter zombie territory. They are not the majority – at least, not at this time. But they seem to be growing in larger numbers throughout our society.
Pay attention; be mindful of the subtle clues they leave. They are real, and they are among us.
And that, my friends, is the latest elephant in the room.
