At a convention in Fort Lauderdale, George ate the second-most cornbread. "It was delicious," he recalls. "I like cornbread a lot more than I like conventions."
You might see George wandering around in the park, a skinny old man dressed in mohair, deeply immersed in thoughts that make no sense to you. "Someday we will all be X," he says, "Are you looking forward to it?"
George is often making comparisons that no one else understands. Here he comes now with two rotten bananas in his pockets. "I suppose the world is like these bananas," he says. "I know I'm bananas."
He shares some of the qualities of Emerson and Thoreau, but George recognizes that he lives in a different world. "Emerson said Thoreau was the prince of the huckleberry picnics," he says. "I have stinkbugs on my huckleberries."
Sometimes George appears to be distracted. That's because he sees things the rest of us can't. "Is that a little girl's hatred over there?" he asks.
It often seems like George's mind is in a whole other world. "I spend a lot of time having fantasies," he says. "I spend even more time trying to figure out why I enjoy them so much."
George's navy stories are a little different than the other veterans. "When I heard that Admiral Halsey was coming to inspect us, I ran away into the woods to hide," he explains. "No one was going to inspect me."
Ask George if the rumor that he killed a man is true. He'll just laugh and tell you, "I'm killing people all the time."
It's difficult to determine whether George is crazy or whether he's a genius. Either way, he's not a very popular fellow. "I went to the Mariner Mall and there were all these fifteen-year-old kids there," he says. "They think I'm really weird."
Popularity is a subjective thing anyway. "It doesn't matter how insane you are," according to George. "There will always be someone who likes you."
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Paul Lundgren is a newspaper columnist and a very nice man. He will render his literary works aloud at the Twin Ports Music and Arts Collective on Sept. 17 at 8 p.m. His e-mail address is paul [at] geekprom.com.
