On Being Crazy

Marsilio Ficino said that “the soul is partly in time and partly in eternity.” Thomas Moore says, “I think it’s crucial not to be limited by the time in which you live and to take refreshing excursions from it routinely.”

Finally, someone who ‘gets me’. Or finally, I have come to realize that me being told I was crazy for so many years takes on a whole new meaning. It’s okay that I am crazy. Nowadays, who isn’t?

Actually, I am before my time. Isn’t that what Moore says what everyone is already doing? When the public sits down to watch reality TV, isn’t that numbing process taking you from present time to some other time? Has that other ‘time’ been preset, predetermined by the networks to hook you into their shows? Aren’t they and the Wal-marts and the Wall Streets the masters of our universe in determining what we buy, what we watch, how we act and live?

When I was growing up in the 60’s and 70’s, I often took these excursions. I wanted to be away from the present time. It was full of tension and hate and arguments, hurt and greed. My ‘other’ world took place in the confines of an 8X9 space otherwise known as my bedroom, where I would retreat and write music and song lyrics for the times we were in. Many war songs were written then and Carol King, James Taylor and The Beatles became my inspirations.

Oh, I did my fair share of journaling. We called it writing in your diary back then. My anger, hurt, frustrations, and hopes were played out within the confines of a small notebook. That abruptly stopped once the diary was stolen by my brother and dramatized for the rest of the family over dinner. To this day, my brother cant’ let go of the views of him by an angst-ridden pre-teen. And so I was dubbed ‘the crazy one’ because my views were not accepted by my present time family.

It was not in my parent’s home that I honed my creativity. It was on my excursions elsewhere that I blossomed and learned and created. I learned that there were other folks like me out there. Those who were also dubbed ‘crazy’ by their present time families.

Bunny Lytle hired me to work at Elgin State Psychiatric Hospital in 1990. I’ll just pause and let that resonate with you...

Working for the Bunny at the state Looney bin.  ...seriously….

What did I do for a living? Bugs Bunny hired me to teach gardening classes at the Looney Tunes hospital. And yes, we grew carrots and cabbage too.

When my family got wind of this, they took out the old photos of me and the stolen diary, studied them carefully again, and said, yep, there it is, can’t you see it? She’s crazy. As if certain smirk or frown or even giggle can be found in the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders under mental psychosis.

Bunny understood me. Our families were created from the same mold. He was deemed ‘crazy’ too. He said he only hired people like me who had the same understanding as he had growing up. He said we were the sanest people out and about. Bunny explained it best.

Who defines crazy? These folks are so tuned into their souls, the world around them, that they don’t fit it. They are special – enlightened so to speak that they are unable to live in our Wal-Mart, Wall Street worlds. They are beyond food and shelter. No medications have changed their behaviors to ‘normal’. They exist in another time and place!

So, there we were - crazy people working in and caring for the mentally insane at the psychiatric hospital. So call me crazy if you want. Call yourself crazy! It’s okay.

It’s easier to live, breathe and create in the confines of my 'other world' than live in the insanity of Snookie, Paris, Tiger-Blooded Charlie Sheen and The Situation, in the confines of 6 million square feet of Wal-Mart....

The Happy Hour Deejay

Time is running faster and faster. How is it that 26 years seems like just yesterday? I met up with two old acquaintances last night. Of course, as it is always said, it seemed like it was yesterday. And you fall back into the old speak, old memories, old stories. And of course new stories as you catch up.


It took a while to pull it all together. If there is one good thing about Facebook, it does give people a chance to find each other and catch up if it is desired. Of course, there are the people from yesteryear that pop up, find you, and create a big whoo ha about finding you. How are you? Where have you been? What are you doing? Remember this? Remember that? Remember that person?



Toga Night!

 So we finally got together. I went home quickly after work and tried searching through old photos to find those from our times together. We were all deejays for Stuart Anderson’s Cattle Company Restaurants back in the 80’s. These restaurants were the first of their kind, with attached bars, open deejay booths, and dance floors.

I was the happy hour deejay, Monday through Friday, 4-8PM. Remember happy hour? It was real back then. Half priced drinks and a full “free” appetizer bar. I would spin records (remember vinyl records?); customers would stop on their way home from work and have a few drinks and a couple of tacos (Wednesday appetizer special). I had my regular customers who eventually would be waiting for me before I even got there. And they would stay till 8pm and then sometimes stay later and have a drink with me at the bar.   There was no running to get here or there in a hurry like today. 

Oh, the parties we would run! When there was a big event, we would fill the place from 4pm till 2AM when the bar would close. There were times when I needed bouncers next to the booth during happy hour!

I have photos of events, videos of productions we staged and filmed. We made our own music videos using deejays from the other Cattle Company locations, some waiters and other staff. Last night’s meeting prompted me to gather up all the videos and restore digitally before the VCR tape disintegrates. Of course, I will watch them over again and reminisce and laugh at our craziness. I showed them to my older son and his girlfriend not too long ago. I was their age when they were created.

And yet, it seems like yesterday. I can still remember the moves. I remember standing in my booth, having the time of my life. It was my family, my stage, my performance each day, my audience. Damn, how lucky can you get to have these memories! Next time, we will ask to be seated at the table that now occupies what used to be my deejay throne. And we will hoot and holler about old times as those around us watch the crazy old folk!

Whack a Mole and Old age

I know, I know, enough about getting older!!!  But please bear with me because all this stuff is kind of new and actually pretty hilarious to me!

I'm in the car today and it's very sunny outside.  My hubby calls me princess and the pea because I was always so sensitive to anything touching my body.  I can feel the stray hairs off my head that fall and get caught in my shirt or worse, between your butt cheeks!  Or getting short sheeted or a crumb that falls into your boot.  I can spot a grey hair a mile away!  (Okay, not really but you get the picture)

I can also feel the little hairs that have been sprouting from my chin, my cheeks, anywhere.  I am in the habit nowadays of constantly rubbing my finger across my cheek or chin for that stray, wiry hair that seems to pop up within minutes of the last hair check!

I am sure now that each time I pluck one of those little devils from my chin, it forces another one up and out of its slumber.  I was frustratingly saying that in the car when my older than his years young son said, "You know, Mom, it's kind of like Whack a Mole."  You know, that kids arcade game where you have to hit the moles on the head as they pop up from their holes. The more you hit the moles, the faster they pop up.

Wise ass son.  Okay, it's true.  The faster you pluck, the faster they pop out.  I guess that's why you sometimes see women with almost full beards and wonder if they realize it's on their face.  Not to mention, I am of Mediterranean descent, so it makes it all one hundred times worse.

Don't you want to have a tweezers handy when you see a long, wiry hair on a friend of yours face?  I do.  I just want to pluck it for them.   Wouldn't that be easier than telling them?  Save them the embarrassment and draw fast with the tweezers.  They wouldn't know what hit them.

How about those hotel bathrooms (I am thinking in particular about The W) where they have dozens and dozens of makeup lights.  I've missed dinners because of those bathroom lights.  "Be right there!  In a minute!  Just plucking a few hairs!"  And then silence when I realize my husband has taken his clothes off and fallen fast asleep.  Good, then I have more time to search and destroy.

So please, I don't want to be a bearded lady.  And I seem to be losing the battle.  So if you find one on my chin, please pluck away.  I won't get mad.  I will probably thank you and then continue my own personal game of Whack a Mole....