i may or may not be crazy
December 23, 2008
I thought we had established that I was NOT crazy. I may be forgetting where we left that.
Anyway.
I’m leaving with the family for Christmas to drive down to Mexico to build houses for people with no houses. I’ll be back in a week. I want to leave you with this thought:
I think I might be crazy, but I can’t decide.
Consider the drying of oneself when one exits the shower. I’m not sure if that’s in the textbooks or on the list the court uses to establish legitimate craziness, but it has me worried that my heirs will use it to have me made a ward of the state.
I get out of the shower, and grab my towel, same as everybody else, and start drying myself, same as everybody else. But if I get interrupted while I’m drying myself, I have to start over.
See, I dry myself according to a very specific order. And one of the crazy things is, I can’t remember the order, I have perform the order. I tried to just sit down and write the steps for you in a bulleted list. I think I ended up with random items on the list, like “take out the trash” or “watch TheWire.” No good. And I can’t just resume drying, because, since I don’t know the order, I’m lost when I stop.
So in order to compose this post for you, gentle reader, I tried to pause after each drying step, and write down the order. But I flailed, and ended up wet in places I shouldn’t be wet. That’s no good.
What I know is this: I dry myself in a particular order, but that order cannot be written down or remembered, it just IS. I think I’ve discovered a permutation of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. You can DRY yourself in order, but you can’t KNOW the order of the drying.
I await my Nobel Prize. That comes with cash, right?
dug 
December 23, 2008 at 11:30 am
dude, if you watch/enjoy/appreciate The Wire, your sanity is safe.
if you haven’t already, catch The Corner. it’s coming on netflix for me today. it’s supposed to be a precursor to The Wire, only darker and gloomier.
i want to be like jimmy mcnulty when i grow up.
December 23, 2008 at 11:31 am
It’s a sign of getting old, I hate to say. You’ve done some things so long they have become autonomic functions so all your brain has to command is “dry” and it happens. But that’s OK, your brain has more important things to do, like investigate every aspect bodily waste functions.
I know my dry routine – it hasn’t gone automatic yet. In general I start at the top and work down:
Dry hair, face (special attention to the nooks and crannies of the ears), neck, shoulders, left arm arm then right (go down the top side, come back up the other side), armpits, chest, sides, buttocks, groin (dry thoroughly to avoid crotch rot – yes, it’s rare here in the desert but once you’ve lived in any humid place you know to fear this possibility), right leg then left (same pattern as arms, dry between the toes [see crotch rot]), dry back by grasping each end of towel and going back and forth like a shoe shine, the butt crack is last.
I don’t need to explain the last step, do I? I use the middle of the towel for my face and the rest of my body, and the ends of the towel for the “end”. Some prefer more precise boundaries:
Feliz Navidad!
December 23, 2008 at 11:34 am
I tried to include the towel image, but WordPress didn’t like my HTML, so go here:
December 23, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Crazy? I went went crazy once. They put me in a white room with rats. Rats? They drive me crazy. Crazy? I went crazy once. They put me in a white room with rats. Rats? They drive me crazy. Crazy?….
December 23, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Did you have to pass any sort of handyman competency test or evaluation in order to qualify to help the homeless build homes? Didn’t think so.
December 23, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Once you can replace a door knob, you’re qualified for all carpentry. But maybe he’ll just be doing door knobs.
December 23, 2008 at 9:53 pm
KanyonKris — TMI!
Dug — just embrace the crazy. If the worst of it is limited to things like this post, you are probably better off than the rest of us. (even when we take our meds!) Happy holiday hammering (you know, with a hammer, not in a bar).
December 24, 2008 at 12:08 am
Not crazy, just special 🙂
December 24, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Very, very special.
Buena suerte conducir en Mexico. Espero que tengas mucho dinero contigo para que puedes pagarlo a la policia. Si no, que tengas una Navidad increible en un carcel en alguna ciudad en Mexico:-) Feliz Navidad y Prospero Ano!
Vaya con Dios, y regresa con salud.
December 24, 2008 at 8:23 pm
wanting to be just like jimmy mcnulty when you grow up is a sign that you are already well beyond crazy.
December 25, 2008 at 11:49 am
yo quiero Taco Bell.
December 25, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Just a bit of OCD.
Sweet!!
Merry Christmas
December 26, 2008 at 12:32 am
Why not video tape this wondrous event, take notes as you watch the replay?
I enjoy your humor.
December 28, 2008 at 7:55 am
I don’t have a house. Why do you have to drive all the way to Mexico to build houses for people who don’t have houses. Besides, you and I both speak English, so I can plainly tell you that the paint in the living room was supposed to be cinnamon, NOT umber, and what you put on the walls is clearly umber and NOT cinnamon and therefore, you’re going to have to reprime and repaint the whole space, and also, those doorknobs don’t look like the ones we discussed, since they seem a little too modern and not enough country, for the country-modern style I told you “we” wanted, and have you noticed the kitchen counters?…
December 29, 2008 at 11:39 am
i wipe the face, dry the hair, do the ears, and then do the two-handed back and forth thing starting at the neck and going down to the waist. then it’s down the outside of the left arm, and back up the inside, and then the same on the right; then the chest following the trail down to the nethers where i first do one inside side, then the other; dry the backside (also one ‘side’ at a time) and then go down the right leg to the knee, and then the left leg to the knee and then the left leg to the top of the foot, and then the right leg to the top of the foot.
then i toss the towel out on the bathroom floor, wipe down the shower (with a different towel) and then step on the towel on the floor for the bottoms of the feets, and i finish by going between all the toes (left foot first)…
did someone say ocd?
ps please be careful as you try to teach your kids the true meaning of Christmas by being a part of the solution… : )
pss i don’t care which part of the towel touches which nether. it’s all very clean by then.
December 29, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Anonymous – If you categorize my toweling off procedure as too much information, I’m not sure this blog is for you. This is the HOME of TMI and dug is the undisputed champion. (Anyone want to go toe-to-toe with dug and see who can get the most personal without flinching? No hands? I thought so.)
December 29, 2008 at 6:19 pm
hoyacougar – I prefer to call it efficient, but there is a fine line between that and OCD.