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For those of you just tuning in, I am the head of security for a very large homeless shelter. How large? We see roughly between 250 to 650 people a day.
My job is basically to keep a round lid of calm on a square box of chaos. A couple weeks back I had to put my lid-fitting skills to the absolute test.
I had just opened the doors to the shelter, letting our usual breakfast crowd in, when one man wandered through, catching my attention. Now keep in mind he was competing for my notice that morning with someone came in dressed as a pony and another one who came in with a pot on his head.
Barefoot, wearing pants that he had most certainly recently peed in, he was wandering through our day room levitating his hands over sleeping peoples' heads and muttering. Worried that he might end up with a fist in his face, I wandered over and said, "Hey! You're a new face, what's your name?"
It was at that moment that I knew I wouldn't get a chance to finish my first cup of coffee for the day and I might as well throw out the idea of getting anything else productive done.
I blinked at him a little and said, "Alright Mr. Christ, what are you doing?"
His hands hovered over a sleeping patron, "I'm healing them."
"Can we wait until they're awake to heal them? How about we let them sleep, okay? Let's get you a doughnut."
Eventually I was able to convince him, in all his majestic glory, to go sit down long enough for one of the staff members at the shelter to provide him with a doughnut. He held the doughnut in his hands, looked at us, then held it above his head and said, "I will feed all the hungry with this!"
Our first miracle of the day was that, as he crumbled the doughnut into crumbs and began flinging it everywhere to 'multiply' it, none of our other patrons threw punches back.
The entire day, our visitor was insistent that he was in fact Jesus Christ and refused to respond to anything else. We tried J.C., Buddy, Buckaroo... apparently he was dead set on being our savior, which we soon found out had some odd rituals with it.
Never in my life would I have dreamed that one day I would have to yell things like, "Jesus, you have to wear pants!" and, "No, Jesus, we don't try to lick people!"
Eventually, it got to the point where the staff collectively decided that he was really a danger to himself. Okay, he wasn't a danger to himself, he was a danger to others becoming a danger to himself. This meant that it was time to call on our trusty friends at the local mental health crisis response center.
This is how that conversation went:
Mental Health Crisis Response: "Crisis Response, what can we help you with?"
Me: "Well, we have a guy here who is claiming to be Jesus Christ who is persistently trying to heal people who are sleeping, refuses to put socks or shoes on and has now peed himself twice. We could use an Mental Health Professional."
MHCR: *Silence, that was then broken by uncontrollable laughter* I'm... *snicker* sorry... Can I get the individuals first and last name?"
Me: First name: Jesus, Last name: Christ. He won't give us any other name and this morning he called me a harlot for not allowing him to exorcise a demon from our piano.
MHCR: *Laughing* "Can I get a date of birth?"
MHCR: *THUD-CRASH!*
Me: "Are we okay over there?"
MHCR: *Absolute belly shaking laughter* "Sorry! I fell out of my chair! We'll send some MHP's to your *snicker snicker snicker* location!"
I officially managed to break mental health crisis response. After a while they came to take him to where he could be analyzed, at which point he tried to start a 'tickle-fight' with the escorting police officers.
So the next time I have people at my apartment door asking if I've heard the good news, I'm going to tell them that the good news is currently being evaluated by professionals for several delusion disorders.
Have you heard any good news lately?
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