Black Sheep

I met the most bizarre guy today… The worst part is I was intending to write about him even before I met him. I’m having lunch in my usual spot, the Herb Café… I’m on my own, but by this point I don’t really mind… it gives me time to just chill outside and people watch… read a book… whatever… so this guy pulls up in this big fairly nice car… it’s a greenish turquoise color… but rather than looking for a place to park, he makes the tuk tuk drivers move… which I thought was a little odd… but whatever, people do whatever their gonna do. So he comes and sits down at the table next to mine… Now he isn’t bad looking… older… maybe mid-late 30’s. He’s wearing all grey… grey pants with a different colored grey shirt, redish sunglasses and black commando boots. He had tattoos up and down both arms, the one arm had a beautiful Buddha picture on it. So anywho… he starts talking on his phone… fairly loud… and he’s angry about something… everything, whatever. And he’s like… “I’m the black sheep, I don’t care what the white sheep do… I’m the black sheep… I like to be on my own, not that white sheep can’t survive on their own, but they herd with other white sheep… and your born that way, you can’t change that you’re a black sheep”… so at this point I’m amused… but eating a crunchy sandwich so not hearing everything. Next he starts talking about the law… and how he’s had to read the law, and there is law in Cambodia, you just don’t know about it. Then there was stuff about how some guy owed him $3,000 and then I just kinda zoned out. So he gets off the phone and starts talking to the tuk tuk and moto drivers that are hangin around… telling them how he needs to learn some khmer before he dies, and he has a teacher, but he never shows up. And I’m finishing up my meal, and he turns to me, and he starts talking to me… Normal stuff… hey where you from, how long you been here, what are you doing… actually scratched that, he asked me if I was here to save the world like everyone else… normal small talk more or less… and I reciprocate…. He’s from Alabama… which you would never be able to tell cause he had a bit more of a English accent… grew up in Hawaii. He’s been coming back and forth to Cambodia for 4 years, but just decided to “reside” here about 3 months ago… after living in Thailand and the Philippines. He asked me if I got to choose Cambodia… and I said yes… and he was like, “For the past right? Why wouldn’t you go to somewhere like Africa where the action is going on right now?” and he asked me what kinds of human rights issues there really were right now… and wasn’t it a thing of the past… which just kind of made me stare at him blankly… then he told me about his Korean students bringing in a news article about marriage rates and how they’ve doubled in the past year… and that set him on a tangent about how its promoting women in the system… and if women get more power, then the laws will change, and will have to be enforced… Then he moved on to corruption… about how the higher ups looked down on corruption and were frustrated that cops aren’t enforcing the law… b/c they only make $50 a month, so they use corruption as a way to make up for it… etc. etc. etc. About at this point I decide to ask him what he’s doing here… and his reply… I’m the black sheep. My response…. “in Cambodia can you really be the black sheep when everyone here is as well?” His response… the problem is when there’s too many black sheep, someone wants to be the leader…. Lucky for me at this point some kids came to shine his shoes…. And he’s like, yeah I taught them this new method… and showed them how to use a lighter to help burn the wax… and I feel good for teaching them a new skill a better skill, and I’m think about making them nice little boxes to keep their stuff it… While he was distracted I got my bill, said g’d by and split…. Seriously, this place is a trip.