The Friendly Man
I heard part of the first section of this segment on This American Life last weekend while I was driving. I highly recommend listening to it."A special show, composed entirely of stories from just one This American Life contributor: Scott Carrier, whose strange and compelling stories sound like nothing else on the radio.
Act One. The Test: At a fairly bleak time in his life, Scott took a job driving all over the state of Utah, interviewing people who were diagnosed with schizophrenia. His job was to administer a standard test, which measured mental health. The more interviews he conducted and the more familiar he became with the questions on the test, the more he began to wonder about his own sanity.
"The people I interview are all so sad, so lonely, with such thin souls, like ghosts and demons have invaded their hearts and are sucking their souls dry. A person's soul should be like an ocean, but a schizophrenic's soul is like a pool of rain in a parking lot. They suffer and they are completely alone in their suffering, and there's nothing I can do, nothing anyone can do to bring them back. I come home at night and cry. I sob like a three-year-old."
Act One. The Test: At a fairly bleak time in his life, Scott took a job driving all over the state of Utah, interviewing people who were diagnosed with schizophrenia. His job was to administer a standard test, which measured mental health. The more interviews he conducted and the more familiar he became with the questions on the test, the more he began to wonder about his own sanity.
"The people I interview are all so sad, so lonely, with such thin souls, like ghosts and demons have invaded their hearts and are sucking their souls dry. A person's soul should be like an ocean, but a schizophrenic's soul is like a pool of rain in a parking lot. They suffer and they are completely alone in their suffering, and there's nothing I can do, nothing anyone can do to bring them back. I come home at night and cry. I sob like a three-year-old."