Those ridiculous people with their talking machines

ROBERT GARDNER

There used to be a certain kind of person who lived in our

communities. This was a person who wasn’t in contact with the same

reality as the rest of us but who was no danger to those around him.

Such people lived with their families, who kept them neatly bathed

and groomed and didn’t restrict their activities but let them be part

of the neighborhood.

Thus you could walk around Balboa Island and see a grown man

perched on a fence or the sea wall, flapping his arms and making

cooing sounds. This man thought he was a bird. What kind of bird I

don’t know. Presumably not a sparrow or a hummingbird. More like a

crane or an egret -- a large bird. He would sit on his perch,

flapping his arms and then he’d take off. I don’t mean he flew, of

course. He would jump off his perch and run awkwardly up the

sidewalk, arms flapping while he emitted a squawking sound. This was

disconcerting or amusing, depending on your perspective, but

relatively harmless unless you were a small child for whom it could

be rather terrifying to see this grown-up galumphing toward you,

screeching at the top of his voice. I don’t know whether parents

complained or he got carried away and tried to peck someone, but the

bird man eventually disappeared.

The bird man was rather unique. It was much more common to see a

person who talked to people only he or she could see. In Corona del

Mar, there was a woman who would walk up and down Coast Highway

carrying on the most animated conversations. You’d see her speaking,

gesturing, and then she’d stop and listen for her invisible

companion’s response. If you happened to be standing next to her, you

found yourself listening for the response as well, so real was the

world she had created for herself. Her conversations were energetic,

but not angry. Whoever the companions she had invented for herself,

she seemed to have an amiable relationship with them.

Then there was a change. If you saw someone talking to himself, he

wasn’t neatly dressed. He certainly wasn’t bathed. His hair was long

and unkempt, his clothes tattered and dirty. His conversations were

often rants, and he didn’t look that harmless. These people hadn’t

seen their families for years. The era of the homeless had arrived.

They weren’t all violent. In fact, the vast majority weren’t, but

they all looked like they could be. You didn’t feel like you wanted

to be part of any conversation they were having.

And then there was another change. Or so I thought. In the last

year or two, I noticed a whole new group of people walking the

streets, talking to themselves. Once again, they were neatly groomed

and dressed, in fact quite fashionably so. Clearly, their families

were outdoing themselves to support these afflicted members of their

clan. I was so impressed with this new trend I felt compelled to

comment on it to my daughter, who just stared at me. It was one of

those looks that makes you check your fly to see if it’s open, check

your shirt to see if you missed your mouth with the soup you had for

lunch, wonder if maybe you’ve been talking to yourself a little too

loudly.

“What?” I asked, having ascertained that I wasn’t guilty of at

least two of the three.

“Those people are talking on the phone,” she told me.

“Oh, no,” I assured her. “They weren’t holding a hand up to their

ear.”

Then she explained that they have these phone devices -- you

basically don’t need the phone. You have this little thing you talk

into, an earpiece as a receiver and you can chat away wherever you

are. This is supposed to be a great triumph of technology. To someone

who hates the telephone, it sounds like technology gone awry, but my

real concern is -- with all these people walking around looking like

they’re talking to imaginary people, how are we going to know who’s

crazy and who’s not?

* ROBERT GARDNER is a Corona del Mar resident and a former judge.

His column runs Tuesdays.