Your Quirkiest Or Most Eccentric Relatives, Friends, Or Acquaintances

D

Damaged Goods

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Location
Maryland
I'm sure that you have more interesting examples but for starters....

Wladimir was a physicist at both NASA and in the pvt. sector. Superiors and peers lauded his logical approach to resolving problems. His reasoning and demeanor put one in mind of Spock from the old Star Trek series: poker-faced, mirthless, totally devoid of abstract reasoning, just a by-the-book objective scientist.

And yet if you saw the margins of his handwritten journals of scientific notation and mathematical calculations, those margins were saturated with sketches of axolotls. His apt. had a huge wall hanging of an axolotl and a dozen or so axolotl ornaments and knick-knacks.

When I asked him about this obviously affectionate attachment to them, he didn't respond, just raised one eyebrow in that poker face as if to say, "why not?" Curiously, he didn't keep any live ones.
 

I had a great uncle who really believed that at any moment we would be invaded by aliens. I realize many people believed this back in the 50's but he went to extremes.
He had his wife scared to death.
He hoarded food items,maybe even toilet paper.
They had a small little house,nothing fancy but he began to dig tunnels. He tunneled everywhere on his property. Out to the garage,to the wood shed, and to the screened in porch. Every time we visited he would have another tunnel made. As I remember him he certainly wasn't that young but he sure could put a groundhog to shame.
 
I have an aunt who's into "conspiracy theories". They're all bizarre, some more than others.

My favorite is that the US Government is importing cannibals from Africa and putting them in every state in order to eat people who "know what's going on...." Or there's the theory that "satanists" have infiltrated and taken over all the seminaries in the world (Protestant, Jewish, Catholic) and turning out "secret Satanists" who are preaching "coded messages" from the pulpits, trying to turn us all against God.

There's no reasoning with her, so out of love we just change the topic.
 
My grandfather. When I was a kid, (1950s), he showed up at our house with a thorough bred race horse. It was a beautiful, black animal. He wanted to keep it in my back yard. ALL RIGHT!!! My mom said the landlord wouldn't allow horses. DAMN!! That was my grandfather, he always had something going on the side. God knows how he got that horse. He and a buddy had a business selling manhole covers. Now, in a small town , you wouldn't think there be much call for manhole covers. Well, his main job was driving a steamroller for the town's highway dept. That kind of ensured there were always covers to be replaced. He told me the best place to crack a cover was by a lawyer's house. That clankity clank when a car drove over it , always drove people crazy. He called his wife, "my woman". He would scream at the TV saying that Chet Huntley and David Brinkley were liars. TV. He insisted that Westerns were real, with real guns and real killing. He 'worked" on John Kennedy's Senatorial campaign. I wondered what he did, since he couldn't read or write. I could fill this forum with the stories of his less than honest dealings. Like I said, he always had something going on the side- and you really didn't want to know about it.
 
fuzzybuddy said:
My grandfather. When I was a kid, (1950s), he showed up at our house with a thorough bred race horse. It was a beautiful, black animal. He wanted to keep it in my back yard. ALL RIGHT!!! My mom said the landlord wouldn't allow horses. DAMN!! That was my grandfather, he always had something going on the side. God knows how he got that horse. He and a buddy had a business selling manhole covers. Now, in a small town , you wouldn't think there be much call for manhole covers. Well, his main job was driving a steamroller for the town's highway dept. That kind of ensured there were always covers to be replaced. He told me the best place to crack a cover was by a lawyer's house. That clankity clank when a car drove over it , always drove people crazy. He called his wife, "my woman". He would scream at the TV saying that Chet Huntley and David Brinkley were liars. TV. He insisted that Westerns were real, with real guns and real killing. He 'worked" on John Kennedy's Senatorial campaign. I wondered what he did, since he couldn't read or write. I could fill this forum with the stories of his less than honest dealings. Like I said, he always had something going on the side- and you really didn't want to know about it.
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He sounds awesome! No one should be too sane!
 

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