This morning I saw a ton of women walking out of Union Station with flowers. Normally when I see that sort of thing I think ‘Cool! Freebies!’ and head that way to pick up free granola bars or what have you. But flowers? Not really my thing. I never figured out where the flowers were coming from, but I started to conjecture on what sort of people would just hand out flowers. Here’s what I came up with:
1) Religious People
They run around en masse around Union Station. Yesterday alone, on my foray to the Mac Store (mmmm, Mac), I ran into the Amish (who asked me for directions), Jews for Jesus (who got my requisite ‘Still waiting for the Messiah’ snark), Moody Bible people (local religious folk who disturb me since they’re kind of cultish), Mormons (again, they get the snark) and finally the cheerful monks who hand out flowers and offer to sell me books. For what it’s worth, the monks with flowers and the ones with books aren’t usually the same people.
2) Some general freaky Chicago person
These are the people who, for reasons I’ve never begun to comprehend, just wander about being philanthropic. I mean, hey, I’ve had days where I randomly help people get around town, but I never hand shit out. Most of these people seem to be homeless or ‘challenged’ (damn if I can remember the PC word for this, it’s 7am and I’m on the El Train without my coffee). That said, I admire the way Chicago’s taken people with specific disabilities and given them useful functions. For example, there’s a fellow with either Asperger Disorder or Tourette’s Syndrome who’s been hired by the CTA to just make constant announcements at one of the more nutty transfer junctures. He tells you when trains are arriving, leaving, or late. He tells you where to transfer, what the status is on other lines, and so on and so forth. It’s like having a private radio station, tuned into the CTA. And it’s useful! Whichever one he has is pretty noticeable, but I’ve seen that the City tends to pick these folk up and, if they can’t hold a ‘regular’ job, make them announcers somewhere. Bitching. Anyway, they tend to get lumped into the whole ‘crazy Chicago people’ and those are the ones who also hand out things.
3) Serial Killer
Seriously, if I was going to mark people for killing, I’d hand out flowers or something people would hold onto/wear, so I could find them later and kill them in quiet places where no one would see me. Now, I started speculating, as I looked at these flowers, that I’d give different colors to different people. Red to the ones I want to kill, white to the ones I don’t want to kill. That way, everyone would see ‘flowers’ and it might take the police longer to grok to what I’m doing. Hey, it’s not a perfect plan, but I don’t actually intend on doing it! The flaw in my great plan is, of course, that there were women of all shapes, sizes, races and attire carrying the same color flower. That knocked that idea out. Ah well. Good to know it’s not a killer!
4) Terrorism
Cover a flower with some dust like risen or anthrax, get a martyr sort of fellow to pass them out, kill thousands of people in the city. See, it’s at this point that everyone’s staring at me and going ‘What the fuck are you on about! Don’t give people these ideas!’ Look, if I’ve had it, someone else has as well. Besides, there are a crap load of flaws in this plan, including ‘How do you prevent killing everyone between the loading of the flowers to their distribution.’ And you don’t. Which means no sane terrorist would use the plan. Terrorists are sane people, they’re just a little different from you and me. I hope.
5) Someone was selling flowers
This, in the end, was the truth. How boring, I know! But as I rounded the corner, I saw the guy selling flowers. For $.10. Yeah, 10 cents. Not bad. I thought about getting one, but options 3 and 4 were dancing in my head and I declined.