Ida Clare, It's Crazy Out Here

I try not to listen to the news.  It’s not that I don’t care.  I just don’t care enough to put myself through the wringer day in and day out.  I have been wrung out stiff by events in my own lifetime so much that every now and then, a good wind will blow me up against the nearest fence and I have a heck of a time picking the barbed wire out of my backside. 

One might argue that my apathy has settled in due to my age, but I disagree.  I don’t care, because I am sick and tired of giving the mental midgets that surround us in this world the air time that babies and blue-faced asthmatics could be breathing. 

If you don’t have a blooming idiot in your family drinking aftershave or dialing 911 because they’re out of cigarettes, you surely work with one.  The work place is where crazy comes to roost. 

I used to work with a woman who wrapped her lunch in the newspaper and would unwrap it at her desk and read it from back to front while she ate.  One day, I was curious about something going on in the world and I asked her if she had the front page.  She did, but when she gave it to me, it took me a minute to realize that she was wrapping her lunch in newspaper that was eight years old.  I asked her why she was reading eight year old newspapers and she told me she had gotten behind and she was trying to catch up.

Ok?  So that meant that she had eight years worth of newspapers stacked somewhere in her house just waiting until she could find the time to read them through the mustard and mayonnaise stains.  I don’t know about you, but I’m on information overload as it is without trying to catch up. (Or ketchup, if you’re into puns.)

Crazy doesn’t discriminate.  It can be at the head of the line at the bank or attached to a voice at the other end of the telephone.  It carries a gun, drives a car and is married to someone you know.  It has money, opportunity, an internet connection and often a desire to be on the six o’clock news.

What we need is a vaccine for crazy people.  No one has ever said:

“Dear, we must get the children down to the clinic for their crazy vaccine before another outbreak comes to town.”

Why aren’t politicians getting on that band wagon, I’d like to know?  They could argue about whether Obama Care was going to pay for it, or if women should have it while they’re pregnant or if it will ever work for all those good old boys who never mean us no harm.

It’s hard to avoid crazy when you are out in the world, but in the privacy of my own home, tuning off the news can help me feel like I have some sort of control over the basket cases and wing nuts that parade across my television.  This I can do until that vaccine comes along.

Do you know someone who need a vaccination?

Hugs,