Every town seems to have at least one madman running around loose. It is no
different in my town. There is one madman that I encounter almost every day.
He is young and slim, but like all mad people that I have encountered, he is
filthy. He probably has not taken a bath for
years. His waist-length hair is matted and coiled. He wears what's left of a
T-shirt, frayed and with many holes. One can only guess what the T-shirt's
original color was. Now it is simply dirty brown. It is the same with his
shorts. He is a dark-skinned fellow but the filth on his body makes him look
much darker. Combined with his clothes, he is just a walking piece of
grime and filth. People give him a wide
berth wherever he goes. While his appearance is bad, the body odor is worse.
The stink becomes noticeable from about two meters. Anything closer than that
will nicely fit the phrase "stinks
to high heaven". For one thing, he will never ever find people crowding
around him. He will have maple personal space wherever he goes. Nonetheless he
does not get to go into buses, shops or public places where people gather. He
gets shooed away, for obvious reasons. Despite his unpleasant appearance and
smell, he is a pretty harmless fellow. He goes 'happily' walking around town
every day. Blazing sun or driving rain does not seem to bother him. He could be
dry as a bone on one day and wet as a drowned rat on another. A normal person
would have suffered a heat stroke or caught pneumonia, but this madman seems
immune to normal afflictions. Rain or shine,
he can be seen walking on the streets, muttering to himself or taking with some
invisible person. I suppose it would be a matter of time before the
authorities round him up put him away somewhere. Meantime he just goes around
town reminding clean, normal and harried people what it means to be filthy, mad
and be without a care in the world. |