Who Are Your Friends?

Growing up in NYC, I would see strange people in the neighborhood on a regular basis and after a while it just became a normal thing. For the most part they didnt really bother anyone, they were just an eye sore at worst. As I got older, I got to know some of these people. Some were Nam vets, homeless, crack heads and some of them were just out of there fucking skull. The one thing that they did all have in common, is that they all had a really good story to tell. My mother had this one friend, he was about in his late 60's early 70's. They called him Bird Man. He got this name because he would hide in door ways where you couldnt see him if you were walking by. His thing would be to jump out behind people and scare the shit out of him by making loud & crazy bird noises. To me at that age, I thought it was funny as hell and to this day I still laugh my ass off. The crazy thing was you could talk to him like if he wasnt crazy and he could hold a normal conversation with you, But in reality he was fucked up in the head. There was another dude in my neighborhood that was old as well. About the same age and this guy would roll through the hood on skates and a tennis racket in his hand. Why he had the racket? God only knows. I would see him every where I went. One thing that sticks out in my head about him is..... I was in McDonald's getting some food on 71 st & Bway and he was in there trying to rap to the girl behind the counter. He told here can I have a sunday on a Monday and I thought that was the funniest thing ever. He was definitely a kook. Then there was this homeless lady (bag lady) who had a I Love Lucy hair cut and she also rock'd two pairs of glass'. As a kid I really could not understand any of this. It was all bazaar. She would always be screaming and cursing. Saying things in German and she was always hanging in P.S.87 school yard where I would hang out and play as a kid. The other kids would throw things at her to watch her flip out. Now that Im older I know it wasnt right (not that I through things at her). Whats really crazy is that as I got older These were the people that I became friends with because I had no friends. All the other kids didnt want to play with me because my mother was fucked up on drugs so they all made fun of me (its all good). It got to the point where I would walk down the Upper West Side and all the bums, people selling books, pan handlers and homeless knew me. I would walk by and they would say shit like "yo spunky, you ok? here... here's a dollar and stay out of trouble). Spunky was my moms pet name for me and everyone knew me by it in the hood. I hated it them, but I miss it now. By being friends with all these wack jobs (because thats what they were) it helped in a weird way guide me through life. I miss that feeling of being able to walk down the street and everyone knowing me. Thats just more proof of our communities disappearing. Once and a while when I return to the old hood, I still see some of those people around and its crazy because they know me from my daughters age and she will be right there with me when I run into these people. At some point things will always come full circle.