“Aliens walk among us,” she told me.

“You think so?”

I usually buy a copy of Streetwise from Patty, outside the train station. I don’t know where she lives, but I know she’s not homeless. At least not yet. Last week she was holding up a sign that said she was having trouble making her rent this month. I’d never seen Patty hold up a sign before, so I knew things must be bad.

She didn’t make eye contact with anyone as they walked by, but she never does. Not until you say hello and chat with her. When I walked up to her last Wednesday, I saw that behind the small cardboard sign in her hands, she was reading a book.

Before I got to know Patty, I would have guessed her to be around 70 years old. Her back is a bit hunched, and she shuffles when she walks, staring at the ground. She’s missing several teeth. Most days, she carries a green and white umbrella, to protect her from rain, cool her from the sun, or shelter her from a freezing wind. She wears earmuffs well into the spring months.

But whenever I look into her eyes as we talk, I see someone much younger, maybe only in her 50s. Her eyes have a sparkle to them when she talks. She speaks quickly, her accent giving her away as a Southsider.

For some reason, I start out all our conversations the same way, with some commentary on the weather.

“Hope this rain lets up!”

“Can you believe it finally feels like summer?”

“Did you hear we’re supposed to get six inches of snow tonight?”

It just always seems like the right place to begin, I suppose because seeing her out there all day makes me acutely aware of the elements. Last Christmas, I got her a gift card for Target and we talked about the fleece blankets they had on sale. As we were talking more about the weather that day, a man came up to buy a paper from her.

“Oh, Nathan – this young lady just gave me a Christmas present.”

I turned and saw a man in a suit. As I introduced myself to him, Patty told me he was a lawyer who worked down on Wacker Drive. For a split second, I imagined how funny it would be if this lawyer and I got to talking, and later ran into each other again while talking to Patty, and then fell in love, and oh, what a story it would be that Patty was the reason we met each other all those years ago. But he just said hello and kept walking.

“So what are you reading today?” I asked.

I don’t remember the title, but it was something by Dale Brown. Military espionage, I think. Patty reads a lot. In addition to the occasional action-thriller, she reads the kind of books you can’t find in regular bookstores. Books written and self-published by conspiracy theorists, I can tell just by looking at the covers.

So our conversation last Wednesday began, like all others, with a discussion about the weather. And like all others, it bounced quickly from topic to topic as I chased after Patty’s stream of consciousness.

We talked about the forecast for rain, and she commented on the recent space shuttle launch. I wasn’t aware there had been one, but she said that whenever NASA launches a shuttle into space, it disrupts the weather all across the planet. It makes sense, I suppose. If a butterfly can cause a typhoon, certainly the shuttle can cause a rainstorm.

“They say if you could actually see the atmosphere, it would look like Swiss cheese from all the holes punched in it by all those rockets.”

After a brief discussion of chaos theory, we moved on to aliens. I can’t recall how we segued into it, but she brought up Sigourney Weaver.

“Did you ever see her in that movie? That alien movie?”

“Alien? Yes – I love that movie! Did you ever see the second one? I think it was the second one where she walked into a nest of all those alien eggs. So creepy.”

“No kidding? I don’t think I saw that one.”

“Yeah, and I think the government was breeding the aliens for some reason. I can’t remember why.”

“Doesn’t surprise me. Aliens walk among us,” she said.

“You think so?”

“Oh, yeah! Did you ever notice how people in power are all left-handed with blue eyes?”

“Seriously? No, I never noticed that. Although I know a lot of presidents have been left-handed.”

“Yeah. I think Dick Cheney is an alien, don’t you?”

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah! Look at his eyes. Did you ever look at his eyes? You can kind of see through them. And all those millionaires are left-handed and have blue eyes. Like Donald Trump. And George Bush.”

I had no idea if Dick Cheney, George Bush or Donald Trump were left-handed or blue-eyed, but I wasn’t about to bog down this discussion with details.

“And of course you know that George Bush’s grandfather did business with the Nazis, right? Oh yeah, he was almost brought up on charges for it.”

If I hadn’t had a 9:00am meeting that morning, I might have stuck around to get more details on aliens and the Bush/Nazi connection, but I had to get to work.

“Well, you’ve given me a lot to think about today, as usual. I’ll see you later!”

“All right. You have a nice day!”

I waved goodbye and headed into the office, making a mental note to pay particular attention to any left-handed blue-eyed people I ran across.

Filed under: General on August 16th, 2009