May 03, 2005   "Arrivederci means see ya later, motherfucker!" Or so I was told by the lunatic who just walked by my cafe. He came by, yelled "arrivederci means see ya later, motherfucker!" then walked right into oncoming traffic, screaming, "I want to die! Kill me now, motherfuckers! Kill me! Kill me!"

No one was sure what to do, but a hippie dude at the cafe finally asked the guy if he was ok, and his prize for asking the $64K rhetorical question was to get an earful of, "mind your goddamn business, asshole," but hippie guy continued. "Are you ok? Do you need help? Would you like some coffee?" Because nothing calms a lunatic quite like a cup of coffee, but that was turned down and the nut instead offered to punch the hippie in the face. Or, more precisely, punch him in the face, motherfucker.

But just when it was getting exciting, with a fight to the death between a patchoulied peacenik and a wacked out meth freak seeming imminent, the crazy guy apparently came to his senses. Without further ado, he calmly removed himself from the middle of traffic in such a nonchalant way you got the feeling this wasn't the first time he'd snapped back to reality and found himself surrounded by cars, and then he sauntered off down the street, cool as a cucumber, like nothing out of the ordinary had occured.

Traffic started up again, with addled drivers kicking their cars into gear and cautiously heading off down the street, as though they feared another crazy man might dart into traffic, and the cafe patrons slowly picked their jaws up off the ground while exchanging confused looks with each other.

It was so quiet you could hear a pin drop, so someone finally broke the silence by praising hippie guy for trying to help. "Yes, that was really nice," another person added, and heads started bobbing up and down in agreement, but it seemed less like people felt compeled to praise his kind act and more like they needed closure, some sort of final word, after watching a man run into traffic and demand that someone kill him.

And to think, I stopped at the cafe tonight to avoid the craziness of rush hour traffic. Had I known my mocha would be served with a hefty side of insanity, I would have saved myself the time and just gone home and talked to myself.

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