Who's Your Daddy

So, I work at a thrift store that takes donations from the public. I am one of the employees that collects the donations. There I was in the sunshine waiting for cars with a smile on my face. I helped a few people and then, this guy shows up with an entire truck bed of stuff to donate. I uncharitably thought oh no here we go because truck beds full of grubby looking boxes are usually a pain in the ass to deal with. Still, I kept that smile on my face and greeted the customer and told him how it all worked. Plus, the guy was wearing a great shirt, and I definitely gave him points for that. It was the shirt in the picture above. It had Darth Vader and below it said, “who’s your daddy.” I mean who doesn’t love a quirky Star Wars shirt? This one was just hilarious. I grinned and said, “I love your shirt!” with nerdy enthusiasm and was not prepared for what happened next.

He looked at me with a lucid and serious expression and said, “Yea. Well, this shirt represents me,” he pointed to himself and then continued, “I’m a martial artist and I am totally a Dr. Jekyll / Mr. Hyde guy. Yea,” he pointed to his shirt, “I am like Darth Vader.” The gentleman in question was in his late forties in decent shape, he looked fairly clean-cut other than his nerdy shirt.

It was as if a dog stood up on his hind legs and started singing the star-spangled banner. I tried desperately to keep my customer service face in place, but I don’t know how successful I was. Mentally I felt like I had been slapped by a fish. I was Successful enough though, since Mr. Darth Vader kept on singing his song of strangeness.

I helped him empty his boxes into the bins as he continued with his story. “The government tried to kill me,” he told me as if he was explaining what he had for lunch. I must have made some kind of noise because he went on as if encouraged. “Yea, two guys came after me with bats,” he gave me a conspiratorial look with a sly grin, “that didn’t go so well for them though.”

He may have pointed out that he was a martial artist again. At this point, I felt like I had stepped into some alternate universe where the laws of absurdity had changed. I think I said something smart like, “uhh…” and then continued in my brilliance, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

My words meant nothing at all though, because he just kept going on about governmental corruption. When someone is crazy and starts spouting a crazy narrative, its negative because of the craziness. I don’t mean that the story itself is crazy but that the person tends to be erratic and frighting to some degree. Usually there are drugs or something not so good involved, delusional tirades usually have a reason after all.

This guy, however, was genial and nice, he was smiling as he told me that he was fighting corruption, and that the government didn’t like it. “The government is mad about the men I stopped when they tried to kill me. It was self-defense,” he explained as he dumped another box into the bin, “so the government can’t touch me. They really want to, but they can’t do anything.”

Eventually his story came to an end, and he had emptied all his boxes. Half heartedly I tried to remain in the good customer service bubble, so I said, “Thank you. Have a nice day, and we’ll see you next time.”

As if he hadn’t been strange enough, he answered with,” Oh you’ll probably be seeing me. I wrote a book about all this stuff, and it will be published in the UK in a few months.” Seriously… there are no words to describe that moment.

At this point my customer service face was nowhere in sight. I was a flabbergasted gob smacked girl standing at the back of a thrift store with my eyebrows sky high and my eyes as big as saucers. He drove away and I was left with my confusion and a grin on face for the rest of the day as I reflected on the absolute absurdity of life.