You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.
It’s one of the reasons I created this web site.
Why do bad things happen to good people? Because life is crazy.
Why do bad people get good things? Because life is crazy.
Why did I get a flat tire in the rain? Because life is crazy!
Why do my jeans feel so tight across my belly? Cause life is Crazy!
I’ve always felt the vibe, but never classified it so precisely till recently. Then Bam, it hit me like a ton of bricks.
Life is Crazy!
And I know the precise moment that I decided to get off my ass and ride that crazy wave.
And I owe it all to one word: STAMMER.
When someone told me that I couldn’t use the word stammer, I lost my Crazy Mind and right then, right there, decided to take my Crazy Message to cyber space where the long reach of the word police is practically non-existent.
He apparently has a speech impediment and took the word choice as a personal offense.
What are the crazy odds? I should have bought a lottery ticket that day.
Stammer?
What’s interesting about this is I never used the man’s name. I never indicated who he was. I never specified anything identifiable about him. I certainly didn’t know he had an alleged speech impediment. The sentence about the man was barely 10 words long. He was just some random guy from a murky place, from the background noise of existence. It was a throw away paragraph.
Not to him. He apparently thought I was writing about him. He apparently thought the stammering man was him and I was making fun of his speech impediment. A speech impediment I knew nothing about.
None of this mattered to him.
Journalistically I was standing on the mountain top of 1st Ammendment protection. From a writing standpoint there was nothing malicious. From a personal standpoint, I don’t make fun of people’s infirmities.
As a courtesy to this anonymous, non-identifiable, angry, stammering man, I removed the word STAMMER from my story. I guess he was satisfied, because I never heard from him again.
Removing the word made no difference in the story. But it did make a lot of difference to me.
I reflected long and hard on this moment. I simply wrote a word, STAMMER, and he went ballistic.
But for me, the question of my right to use the word “stammer” and his assertion that I had no right to use the word stammer became an intense and personal battle.
While I stewed in my own juices, my thoughts sizzled with new ideas.
The word stammer led me to think long and hard about life.
“I can’t use the word stammer?” I thought to myself. Are you crazy? That is crazy? Life is freaking Crazy!
That’s when it hit me. Something I knew all along focused before my very eyes.
Life is crazy.
Crazy is a constant in life. It’s like sunshine and rain. It’s like air and breeze. It’s a constant like the clouds over head and the dirt under your feet. Rivers flow through a planet of Crazy. Birds fly over a landscape of crazy. I drive my car through the human fabric of crazy each and every day.
And the only thing that is constant in life is that nothing is constant, except CRAZY.
Crazy huh?
And every day there is a high probability that something crazy is going to happen to you or someone you know. It could be big crazy. It could be little crazy. it could be funny crazy. It could be crazy with devestating reprucussions.
But know this; Crazy is most assuredly going to happen.
Many of you say; “life isn’t fair.”
Well as I have now deduced, life isn’t fair. It’s crazy.
If you think life owes you something then you will always be disappointed. The only thing you can count on is that life will give you a swift kick to the stones if you let it. You know why? because life is crazy, and has a strange desire to kick you where it counts.
Now that you realize life is CRAZY and every day CRAZY is going to try and steal your wallet and sleep with your wife, then why not prepare for it.
If you want to stay warm, you put on a sweater. If you need to hydrate, you drink water. Preparing for Crazy is no different. It’s an undeniable element on the periodic chart of life.
At this very moment, I’m writing this under the influence of crazy. I am mad, perhaps even pissed off. I think I’m mad because I’m thinking about that anonymous stuttering guy again.
Words are filling my mind which wants me to write hard and fast and in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS.
SEE? I AM MAD. I AM PISSED. LIFE IS CRAZY SO SCREW IT!
I’m so mad I could grill chikcken on my chest. Just lay a chunk of meat on my sternum and break out the bar-b-que sauce. Come on kids gather round. Daddy’s cooking food on his torso again.
Now that’s crazy. Funny-crazy! Maybe even CRAZY-CRAZY!
Have you ever heard the phrase; life’s a bitch and then you die. Well in my book, life is crazy and then you die.
So do something with the knowledge that life is crazy and it’s coming at you like a bullet train on a way set of tracks.
Like Easter Eggs in a carton, Crazy comes in many colors. It can be your most unexpected pain in the ass. But it can also be a sudden burst of laughter. Crazy can be a weird smile from a stranger in a car. Crazy can be something you see on tv that makes you giggle. Crazy can be a ton of bricks falling from a building and landing on your foot. That’s what’s so Crazy about Crazy, you just never know.
You can’t forecast crazy like you can the weather. You just have to know it’s out there, like a shark, that is eyeing you from the darkness. Are you Crazy’s next declicious meal? Only crazy can decide.
Thanks to the stammering man, I now wake up each morning, stretch and say to myself; OK, Lord, here comes another Crazy day. “Bring it!”
I push crazy into a special place in my mind and then stare at the mirror and smile. After a few seconds, I burst out laughing, because I look so absurd, smiling on the outside while burning with crazy on the inside. It’s enough to make you laugh.
Laughter is truly good medicine for Crazy. If that doesn’t work; drink a beer. Maybe the brain cells you kill will be the ones that are making you crazy.
If nothing else, maybe the beer will just make you STAMMER.
CRAZY HUH?