Jamaica is full of fun people. It’s human nature that people just want to be heard or connect in some way and if you just take the time to sit and talk to the average Jamaican on an average day you WILL connect.
One of my examples is “Mikey”. He lives in the same neighborhood as I used to live in Ocho Rios and I often ran into him at nights in the local bar. My first impression of him was that he was a little bit loco in the head because he’d been drinking. Mikey was convinced I was with the CIA or some kind of government organization simply because I was foreign in his neighborhood and was wearing camouflage pants. Later in that same evening he switched his story to me being an alien and he was too scared to look me in the eye. It was actually quite funny, I would purposely put my face right in front of his and give him bug-eyes to see if he could look at me. He couldn’t. He completely avoided eye contact.
I totally bought into Mikey’s behavior since this was my first experience with him, while all the locals in the bar brushed him off or told me to just ignore him. But I was fascinated that alcohol could make someone’s mind work like his was working! I’m not one to ignore people I’m entertained by no matter what the other locals say. I came to this bar alone and no one else was entertaining me so I made friends with the drunk!
Mikey got uneasy after a while when an acquaintance of mine showed up who was also wearing camouflage. This of course, was unplanned but now Mikey was sure this was a conspiracy in progress.
The absolute icing on the cake for this evening was when the bar closed up but it was raining so hard I couldn’t walk home yet. Me and a few other patrons were on foot…Mikey was one of them. So there we stood under the overhang of a locked up bar, around 1:00 AM in a downpour. As if that weren’t enough….the power cut and the street turned black. There’s only one streetlight on this road and it’s at the bottom of the hill. Most people decided to run for it, seeing that the rain wouldn’t let up but they lived closer than I did. The only one who stayed behind was my friend Nicky who lived literally next door to the bar. He only stayed to make sure there were no alien encounters with Mikey. The three of us stood there until close to 2:00AM when the rain slowed to a sprinkle and finally I could walk home down the big hill. And wouldn’t you know Mikey was going my way.
Mikey was a completely different person in the daytime and one might overlook that based on his behavior at nights. He is pleasant and courteous and always concerned about my safety and well-being. He keeps telling me I’m crazy to walk the streets alone after dark but I think that’s his “conspiracy theorist” tendencies at work. God bless Mikey 🙂
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