I have a wild story for you. This is a true story the name has been changed to protect this man. I sat in the journalism lobby at Salt Lake Community College. I had never concerned that now being an editor I could get letters to the editor. That is until today. This man approaches me, let’s call him Fred. Fred is a deep thinker. Well, I guess you could call him that. I would call Fred a man with a conspiracy theory yelling at clouds handing out manifestos of grandeur. Fred would call himself a truth teller. Fred walked over, a fat man with a gray beard and lost eyes. Handed me a piece of paper and sat down beside me.
It read, Dear editor. What came next were about twenty lines of pure chaos. A man detailing how he had spent thirty-six years in the authorities, apparently “volunteering for the FBI” no proof of it though. Talking about how he and his brother along with the help of Hillary Clinton had hunted down 86% of the communists in this great country of America and put them away for treason. Then it went deeply sideways, speaking on the 14% of communists still out there in America. How these communists still controlled 39% of the country and some of these folks resided in the temple of democracy in the District of Columbia. It continued with his address, phone number, and a blog spot website which I won’t disclose here. Asking to be interviewed.
At this point as an editor of the paper, I immediately found myself laughing off a man poisoned by some deeply disturbing mental disease. I needed to do the good work God intended me to do as a journo though. So I asked follow ups. Starting with the phrase only I the brutally frank idiot in the journalism lounge would speak. “Frankly sir this is written incoherently” Fred replied, “Do you think so?” “Why yes, I replied. I don’t quite understand what you’re trying to say, you talk about McCarthyism and Communism and ramble on about these statistics that you have no backing of” He sat there silent. The dead man’s dream had come to almost a complete close. Lost in thought, searching for his next move. “Hm” was his response and he sat quietly. Alone in his mind.
We sat in stale silence for a good five minutes. Finally, I decided to pierce the silence. “Can I help you with anything else?” He looked at me, calmly, quietly, this was not a man in distress. “No just catching my breath” I got up gave him my thanks for bringing the issue up with me told him I would look into it and walked away. As I walked away I fought every primal urge to rip up this paper. Rip it into shreds watch his heart broken. I didn’t though, I was perhaps too curious. I turned back.
“What do you want this to accomplish?” I asked Fred. My mind had decided to inquire to see inside the mind of a man being tormented. “I just want it to end,” Fred said. “What to end?” I shot back “I have a one-hundred-thousand-dollar secret contract on my head from communists international” I stopped. What? A hundred thousand dollar bounty, Communists international, a secret. These are words that send the untrained mind into a downspin towards a great spiral into chaos theory. Yet I stayed the course, the voice of reason with a mind full of wild theories, “How do you know about it if it is secret?” “I just know” Said Fred “Wheres the exit?” he asked. I pointed to him the exit and he walked away into the cold world that was after him in his mind.
I sit here now befuddled. The manifest now in a recycling can. How did this man land upon me as the editor? I do not advertise myself as the editor. Was he handing this deeply lost manifesto to any random stranger he met? So many questions, so few answers the man with a crazy chaos theory, crazier than any of mine walks into the room and hands me a manifesto. What could I do but be amazed?