I’m just wild about Harry

 The café at the front of our church, on an inner-city street, attracts a wide range of customers. Many of them are service users – we share the facility with Doorways and a housing program – who have come to meet a caseworker or seek support or assistance. Some are church members, some are homeless, some attend playgroup, and some are simply residents of nearby housing.

One of the more amusing of them is Harry* and we see him several mornings each week.

Harry is generally polite and cheery but also suffers from substance-abuse psychosis and his mind shoots from topic to topic like a squirrel who’s accidentally eaten coffee beans. I often enjoy speaking the language known as ‘stream of consciousness’, so here’s a typical conversation we’d share:

Mal: Good morning, Harry. How are you today?

Harry: I am so good that I am close to being unbelievable. In fact, I’m amazing.

M: Well, that’s nice to hear, Harry. Always good to have amazing people at the café.

H: All of these people are amazing … except, perhaps, that one. She looks like a Chinese spy.

M: Well even that would be amazing, Harry, because she’s Italian. Perhaps she was adopted, who knows?

H: I know. Because I know a good spy when I see one.

M: But surely, Harry, if you know they’re a spy, that means they’re a bad one.

H: Hmm, you might be right. But how would you know that? Maybe you’re a spy.

M: But you don’t know, do you, Harry? You’re not sure. So I must be a good one. Or at least better than the Italian Chinese one over there.

H: Speaking of butter. Do you prefer butter or margarine?

M: I like butter better, Harry.

H: Ooh, wrong answer. Margarine is better.

M: Why is that, Harry?

H: Because it sounds like my mum’s name, Margery.

M: What if my mum’s name was Betty? Would that automatically mean I should like butter?

H: Correctamondo. Do you know who used to say that?

M: Yes, it was Fonzie; Arthur Fonzarelli.

H: I heard he was an Italian spy.

M: You might be right because I heard he was Chinese.

H: I suspect he was wearing a disguise.

M: Hmm, reminds me of an old Herb Alpert song, ‘Disguise in love with you’.

H: Don’t know it; must be before my time.

M: No, it was written in 4/4, that’s common time. So you must know it. It’s common.

H: Did you just call me common?

M: Never, Harry. You’re amazing.

H: Yes, I’d heard that.

M: Yes, I just said it.

H: Oh, well that must be where I’d heard it.

Harry drops by most days, and we’ll regularly have conversations like this. I suspect he talks like this to many people, and they just look at him like he’s unusual or odd. He is, of course, but I don’t look at him like that. I see him and I speak to him like the friendly fellow he is.

The world’s full of odd people like this. I’m one of them. Let’s be nice to them. That’s all some people need. Just be nice.

*Not his real name. His real name is Gary. Possibly.

– Major Mal Davies and his wife Major Tracey are the Corps Officers at Adelaide City Salvos