Random Ramblings...

Today a lady stopped to talk to me.  She said I needed to monitor the "angry" people.  She told this to me specifically to me because I was manning a booth to an event I'd helped plan at work and I was smiling, greeting and engaging with passersby. I jokingly told her, "Yes!  Maybe I should stand along the hallways and greet people, just as they do in large department stores!"  She laughed but then got serious, insisting there were too many angry people around.  I quickly stopped the joking and listened.

According to this lady, she believes she's being stalked by "angry" people.  She believes someone is breaking into her home, frightening her cats, and taking items from her home...picture frames, curtain rods, etc.  She's moved about 3 times in the last couple years.  She told me she believes she saw the culprit breaking into her neighbor's home recently...and when he saw her looking, he smiled at her with the smile of a kid who's hands have been caught in the cookie jar.

I asked her if her neighbors had reported the crime and she said, "No, but I heard the "robber" rambling through things and knocking things over."  She's determined "they" are the construction workers who are working nearby, who, by the way, are NOT Americans.  The police won't help her even after she's called them numerous times.  Her cats are now anxious and afraid because the perpetrators are harassing them when they come into her house.  She's pretty positive these are the same people who were stalking her in the past three cities she's lived in and who killed her older cat at her previous home. 

After being the recipient of several possible schizophrenia phone calls in the past, I quickly recognized her ranting about foreign stalker as something that MAY exist only in her imagination...which, I'm sure, are still very frightening if she believes her thoughts, as she obviously does since she's installed security systems, padlocks, etc., to her home.

She's alone with only her cats.  Is she lonely?  Mental issues?  Or are there really some person or persons stalking this lady?  Whatever it is, she seemed to have gotten some relief by having someone to talk to, if only for a short while.

I don't know why I chose to tell this story...maybe it's my attempt to 1- put her conversation on paper to allow me time to analyze/process our conversation; or maybe 2- to put into words how important it is for us to show compassion to our fellow man.  I don't know.  Maybe you can pull something out of it.