Yesterday there was a knock at the door in the middle of the day. I got up and looked out the glass topped windows - I'm not keen on surprises.

It was my neighbor from the furthest end of the street, the one who suffers from some kind of mental illness, which seems to me like schizophrenia. He was wearing a plastic green hat with a shamrock on it, but otherwise he was dressed normally. Oh, I thought, The Bandicoot, and opened the door.

I've always thought of him as The Bandicoot. No, not as a substitute for "old coot" but like The Bandicoot in an old children's book: From a foreign country, a bright eyed marsupial, anxious and accidentally minorly destructive.

He and Winston regarded one another calmly for a moment. Winston took the stance he usually takes with small children and very elderly or frail looking people, still and relaxed with his mouth a little open his tail gently wagging. I think of it as him saying "See? I won't jump. I won't bite."

Looking at him straight on, I noticed once again how bright his eyes are, and now they were filled with dismay. "Are you really selling this house?" he asked, gesturing elaborately at the sign in the yard.

I nodded. I've noticed that talking to The Bandicoot seems to make him a little more confused. Also, it's a little easier to get what his meaning is if you don't pay a lot of attention to what he's saying, but to his tone of voice and body language. The tone of voice was dismay.

"It's a shame." he said, "You gave me, once, a silver stone. A nickel, silver, stone. I remember you once gave me a silver stone."

This last comes out quickly and I can tell he's frustrated with it. It's close to his meaning, but not exactly. I wonder that he can say anything I can understand at all: the poor man only has three teeth. But you can always, at least, understand the words he is speaking. He makes a tremendous effort to be clear.

Of course, I didn't ever give him a silver stone, and I don't think I ever gave him anything. I might have given him my spare change if he ever asked me for it, but that would have been a long time ago. Also, it would be pointless to stand there in the doorway and try to unravel his meaning with him. Difficult for me and frustrating for him. Besides, his meaning is clear. He came up to the house to tell us he's sorry we're leaving.

He's old enough for his problem to be senile dementia, not schizophrenia. But the lack of dental work makes me think whatever problem he has he's had it for a long time. I wish I knew his real name. I wonder if anyone ever calls him by it anymore.

He seems like one of those people with what I think of as "blown barriers" - like the walls we "normal" people have in our minds that allow us to focus....the thing I have that allows me to know that the parakeets are chirping behind me but still focus on writing this - I think he's lost that. No wonder that in the Middle Ages many people thought that people like him were Sacred Fools, messengers of God. Who else would look at you so directly, speak with a voice full of such emmotion, yet be so difficult to understand?

Anyway, I just said, "Thank you" and closed the door. The closing door didn't seem to upset him. It let him know I didn't want to talk anymore. He nodded and walked back down the steps, shaking his head once more as he passed the for sale sign.

Later, when I went out to light the cheap luminaire's I grudingly bought a nod to Halloween, my least favorite holiday, I noticed that he had picked up the free paper off the lawn and set it on a chair. Those stupid free papers drive everyone in the neighborhood nuts. They litter up the lawns. They have no content, just screaming ads for windows and vinyl siding, and they're especially difficult for me to deal with because they inevitabley land on the slope of the hill where I can't stand and keep my balence to clear them up.

Years ago, I would have gotten very upset about The Bandicoot. I would have tried to find out who was supposed to be taking care of him, why he didn't have his teeth fixed, tried to rally people to the cause of taking care of him, tried to make sure he took his medications and so forth. I would have left sandwhiches on his doorstep, and flyers about mental health clinics. I would have been exhausted and he would have been confused and my neighbors would all be pissed off at both of us.

Now, I just content myself to be friendly to him if I can. Part of me thinks I've gotten smarter and part of me thinks I've sold out, or, at least, given up. Whatever it is, I don't think it's such a sin, anymore, to let people go their own way, as long as they're not hurt or hurting somebody else. After all, who am I to say what "crazy" is?

And, besides, he's the only one around here who's said they'll be sorry to see us go.