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There are so many different sorts of crazy. I have been thinking about this a lot lately. Ever since my co-worker who has the occasional irregular heartbeat (not ever once diagnosed) started carrying her own portable defibrillator with her. The same kind of red, portable defibrillator that you see behind glass in different office buildings, hospitals or gyms.

I know her neuroses shouldn't affect me but when she asked me to run downstairs and get the portable defibrillator from the entryway if she ever passed out and she didn't have hers is when it all crossed the boundary. I told her no. I told her I would call 911. Then she got her own defibrillator. There is a sign on her portable defibrillator case that says, "Call 911!". I asked her the other day how many people have called 911 on her behalf. She said that she turns the case towards her so people won't see it. Oh. The thing is, her craziness is being fed by her husband who bought her the defibrillator because she's commuting long distance from work. Another flaw with this notion is that sometimes she drives to work. Is she going to pull over and flag down a cow to shock her back to life?

So that's one kind of crazy.

Then there are the people who don't quite agree with the so-called upright notions of the world. We often find humor in terrible scenarios - real or imagined... but almost always with a hard grain of truth. We laugh at the idea of "shocking" the corporate folks we work with by posting terrible truths online. Of course we would never do it - we need our jobs after all. But I find it hilarious that the mere notion of it just horrifies the over-starched people I work with. No twinkle of the recognition of humor in their eye - just the stony cold glare of, "How can you be so immature?"

So there's another kind of crazy.

Then there is the crazy that you grow up with and never realize that it's crazy until you start seeing it through other people's eyes. You always knew some thing was off. You didn't agree with the swearing and you didn't think that you should be terrified everytime one of the parents got mad. You tried to protect your younger sibling from "the crazy" by acting like a second mother so they wouldn't have to endure the repercussions of just being a regular hyper kid. So you grow up, get into your first adult relationship and then single handedly recreate the crazy that you had at home growing up. Somehow the crazy doesn't work. You're just as miserable as were living at home and now you have a failed relationship to add to it. How can this be? Your parents have endured "the crazy" for 30 years... so it must work, right? You're not at fault completely - a product of environment and inexperience.

You finally realize that this crazy isn't right. You end things and try to move on but find you have massive anxiety and obsessive thoughts. You go to therapy to get back on track. You start to notice that a certain parental unit isn't as sane as they try to be and realize that while growing up - everyone was going through the motions. Everything was staged, not quite genuine, not quite real but hey, "SMILE!... SMILE NATURALLY!... DON'T LOOK SO FAKE!" All to be a so-called normal family - or the normal family that was envisioned in the certain parental unit's head.

So I think the worst kind of crazy is the kind when you don't realize you're crazy but you're grasping at threads of what you think is sanity while everyone around can see that the threads don't cover up the insanity - but emphasizes what is missing.

Everyone has a little crazy but I think it's good to know that you have it. If you have someone you respect to call you out on it when it goes overboard - ever the better. Lucky you and lucky everyone else who should know you.