What Percent Nuts Are You?

     I have  been graced .  Today, ....I finally found  some solace.  Some peace -of- mind!  Everything is okay....I'm okay.    It's all okay, now..

     I'm sure you have had those times when you wonder about yourself.  Maybe even doubt?  Those times when you feel a little "different" than everybody else?, ...'Eerily unique' perhaps?
And somewhat         ....alone..................................................

     I have sometimes started  to think....    Maybe.....just maybe.... I am 'different' ...because I am batshit-crazy.   A flippin' loon!  A nutjob.  Bananas! Bonkers! Mental.  A basket case! Not playing with a full deck?  Off my rocker?  Lights are on but no-one's home?

    And then....I met 'her.'

   She appeared as a charming  and gentle old lady,  ...slowly approaching my vehicle in the street as if to kindly request a small respite on my car's side-mirror.... as she made her way across.  She grabbed my mirror with the palm of her wrinkled old  hand, and let out a small hacking cough. Then she sighed and leaned in..... pulling her  granny wired-rimmed glasses to the edge of her nose.

     Glaucoma....or cataracs.....or both ..., covered her once blue eyes...and her now foggy lenses blurred the entrance to that cliche'd  'gateway to the soul'.     But she was in there....somewhere.   Or was she?

     What came next was the most sad-sorry painful rambling diatribal story of her  tired old life. The  2 minutes and thirty-five seconds it took her to  ' lay it on me '  while stopped in the street,  seemed more like an hour-and- a half.

     She was abused as a young girl, beaten by her ex-husband, married thrice, broke, soon-to-be-homeless, sick, getting sicker,  and wished for Death to come soon if he was crazy enough to take her!   She had already died on an operating table once,  but God told her it wasn't her time.
 
     Her neighbors constantly spread false and malicious rumors about how she had murdered her own Mother,  and they told hateful, vicious lies to everyone about how she's an ex 'ho and drug addict.   They all tell their kids to STAY AWAY from her ....'cause she's a crazy old nutjob!
    The kids in the neighborhood constantly jinkle the wind chimes on her back porch just to aggravate her. Then they  knock on her front door and run  away.  They tried to poison her dog and she's had to call the cops on every one of them at one time or another.

      She has LUPUS which is a terrible disease and it is  driving her insane!
      She goes to Walmart for hugs.
   
   

     Her brother abused her,  but when she called the cops on him...her Ma just said..." but that's my son!"  After dropping out of high school as a teenager,  she spent six years as a whore at a truck-stop down the street until she finally got a job at the Waffle House where she sold crystal meth once in awhile in the back parking lot.

     She's done with meth and men, and with people in general...because people are just  shitty!

      She had an aneurysm and curses  the doctors  for not turning the blood back on in time.

      She gets 16 dollars a month for food stamps which 'ain't much but she'll take it! '.., and she was screwed  by a loan guy  from Wells Fargo who suckered  her into a reverse mortgage on her home which she is gonna lose it  90-days and be homeless.
     She can't afford her prescriptions any more  because every year the prices go "up-up UP!"  (she rolls her one good eye and gestures toward the sky)  She lives with her sister who seriously wants to kill her, and has tried a coupla times . Her dog is about to die ....and when her dog dies,   she is going to go too because she just can't handle no more than that.

     For some curious   reason,  she felt I would be a willing listener to her tragic life story.   Or maybe, just maybe....she felt an aura of kindred spirit and on-the-edge comradery when our sad lives intersected this day.

      Today, she had picked me out of the crowd from a saved image somewhere in the dark crevices of her deteriorating crazy-brain.  Perhaps  she was the cross-bars before the tracks of  my  very own impending train wreck . She had seen the likes of me before. .on the days when  she rode her  crazy-train heading to Crazy Town.   But at least on this day, only one of us was holding the ticket to the final destination!
 Maybe I still had a chance...

     Now,  I am not sure if this lady is  entirely crazy.  But maybe she is 'mostly' crazy..
 ... Or 'kinda' crazy?
Or going crazy ....
..Returning from crazy?
 One-hundred percent crazy, or just 90 percent??

    Every once in a while,   I meet someone who has  just-a-little higher percentage crazy than me....and I feel okay again.
 Like.... I am not THAT freakin' crazy!  ...so ,  I am STILL... okay!

     And after a  good look around...at my bosses,  my co-workers, my neighbors, the clerk at 7-11, or at some poor empty  ambitious soul who has made his worthless job his signature on life....I realize,  we are ALL a 'little bit crazy'.....just some more than others.

Now tell me...What percent crazy are you?