March 18, 2011

I’ve had the privilege of knowing and meeting all kinds of Crazy in my lifetime. 

Sometimes Crazy is scary. 

Sometimes it’s funny. 

Sometimes it’s disturbing. 

Sometimes it’s shocking. 

Sometimes it’s all of the above and more (Lucky!). 

It’s an unfortunate  trait of our society that Crazy is often frowned upon, but without Crazy we would be a boring lot, no?  I myself like to surround myself with a certain amount of Crazy just to fill up the daily mundaneness of life with small, but awesome snippets of the hi-larity that can ensue from just a little bit of Crazy.

Unfortunately I am relatively sane (or so I seem to think), so in order to fulfill my need for Crazy I have to look elsewhere.   But fear not!  I don’t have to go too far and you probably don’t either.  Family is a great starting point for Crazy. 

Some fine examples from my mom, and before you read these, let me make it clear that both were said with incredible seriousness.

•  Prior to driving across the country in January:  “Make sure to take a route where you won’t get stuck in the snow… It would be a shame if you got stuck and had to eat your dog.”

• The ONLY advice my mom gave me after getting divorced (which apparently in my mom’s eyes meant I was in danger of becoming a raging slut): “Just remember - now is not the time to start having sordid affairs with strangers…. Oh, and don’t date married men.“

But sometimes family Crazy gets old because you are forced to grow up with it, so sometimes you have to venture astray to find adequate doses of Crazy to satisfy your cravings. 

First some words of caution:

• Don’t date Crazy because that kind of Crazy may kill you in your sleep or maim parts of your body that you might ultimately like to keep for future use
• Don’t befriend Crazy because you might be stuck with that kind of Crazy for life.  Once you’ve invited Crazy into your life it’s most likely going to pull up a chair and stay for a while.  It might even “accidentally” lose its job and invite itself to live with you and no amount of scrubbing or vacuuming is ever gonna get the Cap’n Crunch peanut butter sandwich residue that it dropped in between the cushions of your couch and mashed into your rug.  Befriending Crazy is like contracting herpes.   It starts out all fun and well and good to the foolish and unsuspecting, but then you’ve got a problem for life.  The main difference is that you can take drugs to stave off herpes for periods of time.  Crazy parks itself on your couch and never leaves.
• Don’t hire Crazy.  This should be a no-brainer, especially if you work for the post office.

So now you’re wondering how can you invite enough Crazy into your life for entertainment purposes if you can’t date or befriend or hire it, right?  I mean, that’s pretty impossible isn’t it?

Well, Crazy is probably a part of your life and you just don’t know it.  Maybe you have friends of Crazy.  Or maybe Crazy works a few departments removed from yours.  The key is to make sure there are a few degrees of separation between you and Crazy to act as a buffer in case the Crazy gets out of hand.

And don’t discount the value of hearing about Crazy second-hand.  If all else fails you can live vicariously through some poor schmuck who has unsuspectingly married or befriended Crazy.  This way you get all of the entertainment value and none of the risks.

Case-in-point:

But if you are unlucky enough to have friends who have sane friends/family/SOs and to work in a Crazy-free environment (which I truly believe is virtually impossible) and you really want to seek out Crazy, one of the best ways to do that is to find it online.

You can be anonymous online and so you can even bait Crazy online.  They have no idea who you are.

OK so first let me make it clear that I’m not condoning trolling.  Trolls aren’t looking for Crazy, because most trolls ARE Crazy, but Trolls aren’t the good kind of Crazy.  Deep down inside trolls know they’re Crazy and while most of the time self-awareness is a good thing, when it comes to Crazy it’s best that Crazy doesn’t recognize itself. 

So to find the best kind of Crazy you need a little bit of patience.  Peruse a message board for a while.  Post a bit.  Try a few somewhat controversial topics.  Post away and bide your time…

And if you put enough time and effort into this nurturing phase, then eventually Crazy will slowly start to reveal itself.  Sometimes it’s slow.  Sometimes it’ll trigger a simple, “hmmmm… that’s odd…and, uh, not quite sane…” thought in your head but maybe you’ll chalk it up to a misunderstanding or a casual blip that you may forget about until the next time it happens…

And then it does happen again.

And again.

And then you’ll encounter that “WTF?” moment – that moment when Crazy says something so incredibly Crazy that the only valid response is “WTF?”… and it is at this point when you realize…

You’ve

Found

Crazy

Score!

And then the floodgates will open and  Crazy will come careening out of the gate like a motherfucking bullet train on crack. 

You can’t predict when this will happen, but it will happen.

Oh yes. 

It will happen and when it does it will not disappoint….

---