The Crazy Story

I wrote this essay in late 2015.  I refreshed it, and republished today.

This morning, I noted there's this news item out of New York City.  Being from Bama, I have this appreciation of New York City.

The City's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is going to release a report where they indicate via research and polling efforts.....they've determined that one out of five New York City folks....are mentally "crazy", deranged, having psychological disorders, dippy, batty, moonstruck, or flaky.

So you do the math.....8.4 million folks living there, and you come to a minimum of 1.5 million who've got an issue.

The thing that bothers me about this is that New York is trying it's best to outdo Alabama for "crazies".  Everyone knows.....that Alabama has more crazies than any other state.  My humble guess is that for each three adults.....we maintain a 33-percent average....meaning one in three Alabama folks are plain crazy.

My brother would cite personal evidence from attending college in the state, conversations with co-workers, and noting personal observations from the local region......agreeing that it's pretty near a 33-percent craziness level.

The thing is about Alabama craziness......we have different categories.

We have NCAA-crazy....where 40,000 state residents are willing to break into a fist-fight if you insult their team or their level of play from last weekend's game.

We have satan-crazy....where 16,000 people are charged up on religion and believe satan might be a living character and possible the guy in front of them at the gas station.

We have engineer-crazy.....where a guy has a garage lab set up and spending $20,000 a year to develop a watermelon cannon that would fire rapid shots and up to six miles.

We have Republican-crazy.....where you keep saying Republican moral stuff, but cheat on the wife daily, have a same-sex liaison situation, gamble constantly, drink bourbon throughout the day, use meth, and voted for President Obama twice.

We have Democrat-crazy.....where you talk like a Democrat twenty hours out of the day, but you tend to freak people out by quoting Reagan constantly, and support the NRA.

We have meth-crazy.....where you do enough meth to marry some gal over the weekend but you can't remember who was or what she looked like.

We have people-who-are-touched-crazy.....who claim they worked for the CIA, knew Castro, and flew fighter jets in Vietnam.

We have other-people-who-are-touched-crazy....who say they saw Jesus over the weekend, and he convinced them to have a second wife, and burn down the house.

Generally, we don't say much when in the company of such crazies.....we try to respect them and give them as much freedom as possible.  They might be neighbors, friends, relatives, or fellow-church-members.  They might be psycho.....but friendly-psycho.

So, when you read this news item and get all worried about that many crazy folks in New York City....don't worry, the best they can do is number two, and Bama will forever have a majority of crazies around.  This is not a case where some fraudulent NCAA bowl committee can rearrange things and bypass us as number one.