crazy eights

For some odd and inexplicable reason, people who are a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic are drawn to me. They're compelled to talk to me. I discovered this cosmic attraction in high school since our town has a state-run mental institution and our high school was directly across the street from it. The residents would talk to me everywhere, at the gas station, on the bus, when I went to the park... and it wasn't like I ever initiated the conversation, I didn't send inviting glances, hell I didn't even make eye contact for the most part...but still, crazy people inevitably approached me (and you can usually tell the crazies by the state of their fingernails). So today at the Y, I was working out on the elliptical machine, lost in my own thoughts as I contemplated more reasons to hate myself. All of the sudden I notice this lady in front of me, she's staring directly at me and talking. So thinking she is trying to tell me that I was bleeding out of my ears or my eye is about to pop out, I take off my headphones. Then she starts telling me about her daughter who wants to go to a party but she called the house and it was a party of nothing but boys and her daughter would be the only girl. No correct that, she doesn't start telling me cause she's already about a forth of the way through the conversation and just kept on going as if I had been listening from the very beginning. I half-heartedly replied and put my headphones back on, trying to be politely dismissive. But I notice her mouth is still moving and she is still staring right at me. So I stare back and nod at her for a bit, hoping she doesn't figure out I've still got my headphones on and can't hear shit. But then I start to feel a little guilty and I turn down the music and listen. So she starts telling me how she's out of lithium and some other medication, how she's been depressed for four years and that is four years too many, and how her PA can't sign off on the prescriptions so she'll have to get her psychiatrist to do it. All the while she's rolling away on her wheelchair, three feet per sentence. And this went on for ten minutes with little encouragement on my part. So I think I might be giving off some high-pitched noise that only crazy people can hear. Either that or I'm a lot crazier than I think I am and these people recognize one of their own.