There’s a crazy guy I see every morning as I walk to my office on Eighth Avenue. He’s been around the neighborhood for a few years and used to hang out near various playgrounds and places where parents and children congregate. Sometimes I’d see him wearing a children’s mask, which really freaked me out…

…completely!

Once I saw him hovering near a PS 321 class picnic in Prospect Park by the Picnic House. He was holding a Halloween mask over his face and just standing there.  It was really creepy.  I had him pegged as a deviant pedophile schizophrenic nut job.

Lately, he unnerves me less. Oddly, I’ve taken a liking to him. These days, he usually has a white Beanie Baby bear with gold angel’s wings, a Lambchop hand puppet, and two white gooey plastic finger puppets – space aliens, I think. A short black man, his lip is pierced with two small silver hoops and he says a friendly hello to me every morning like it’s the most normal thing in the world; like we’re office mates or something. He always waves his hand puppet at me (or maybe that’s Lambchop saying hello).

I find myself moved by this little man and his puppet. For those who don’t know, Lambchop was the sock puppet sidekick of Shari Lewis, the perky, redheaded puppeteer and ventriloquist who had a television show in the 1960’s. When my son, now 14, was a baby, she was still on the air.

Maybe the crazy guy is attached to his memories of watching the Shari Lewis Show as a child on television. I know I am.

The man with the puppet and Beanie Baby entourage usually parks himself near the tall, elegant newspaper man who sells the Times’ to the subway commuters as they rush by on their way to Grand Army Plaza, and the metal coffee cart, that says "We Made Best Coffee Daily" that is stationed every morning on Lincoln Place.

The tall newspaper guy and the coffee cart guy don’t seem to mind crazy guy