In the shadowy early morning I sat down in a vacant coffee shop and began working on a new project. I waited for a woman I'd never met. An hour and a half later, I would have just experienced drive-by crazy.

Drive-by crazy is when someone has such blatant pathologies that it gives you whiplash.

When she started talking about the competitiveness of law school admissions, I nodded and mentioned that my ex-boyfriend(a genius with a perfect LSAT score, who graduated top of his class from an ivy league) did not get in to Yale or Stanford Law (he chose Harvard), her eyes popped out of her head.

"Is he white?"

Uh...come again?

"Being a white male in America today is the hardest, hardest, most difficult, demographic to be in that there is..." she said, tisking with her tongue and teeth while she shook her blonde head.

Coffee went up my noise.

"Well, um...yes, he is white. And Jewish, which makes it harder, I think." I meant that a lot of Jewish males apply to law school.

"Oh Jewish? Well that's different....I mean....white males have it really hard."

Ohmygawd, are you a representative of Desperate Housewives of the Klu Klux Klan?

I was just about to pull out my best Central Valley vernacular and ask her if she was shitting me, but I couldn't even get that out before she prattled off a litany of secrets she would like me to keep.

"Are you confidential?" Without waiting for my answer she went on:

"Now my daughter has this issue...but when you work with her, don't let her know, that you know, that she had this issue. Now you need to get her to ask me, to do things for her but she won't ask me unless you can get her to think that it's her idea...."

I wanted to ask her if she was raised by an alcoholic.

"And don't let my kids know that you might be staying with us in June....and don't let my husband know that you might be doing that as well because I just want him to think that I'm still just looking..."

Continuing on after we left the coffee shop she noticed a ticket on her car window.

"Ohhhhh shi--," she said striking her fist into the palm of her opposite hand. "I'm going to have to go get a money order to pay for this because you know, there are a few times when I don't want to be married and this is one of them. I've got to go get the money order and pay for it so that my husband doesn't find out!!"

Did I just get dropped off in an FLDS enclave of Utah without my knowing it? What kind of parallel universe does this woman live in where everything must be kept secret, (even useless information)and where white males are in the "worst" demographic there is and where being Jewish and being white were different things?!