Ted was a weirdo

Ted was born with the stench of weirdo grafted to his soul. All you had to do was look at Ted and you instinctively said to yourself “hey, that guy’s a fucking weirdo.” You either loved him or hated him; most folks really liked Ted, although they never took him too seriously.

Ted was smart, funny, sociable, and not too ugly – all of which made up for the fact that he was uncomfortably interested in everything and everyone. Ted was always reading about something strange and forcing everyone to talk about the most bizarre things. He once made me talk for three days about universal symbols in dreams as proof of an objective morality. After the conversation we went out and got pissed drunk and Ted ran around the parking lot of some apartments naked. So, you see, you kind of had to take the good with the bad.
I don’t know what ever happened to Ted. He took off traveling for a while. I saw him about ten years ago and he was laughing about having come back from Mexico and being in trouble with the feds over smuggling some grass. It didn’t seem to bother him too much. I pressed him about it but he just told me not to worry and then started talking about the natural acoustics of Teotihuacán and how neat it was to jog through the open air markets of Mexico City. Ted was a real weirdo.