You So Crazy

I really love those moments when I somehow convince myself that I’ve gone totally insane.

They usually last for only a second or two, just before the mental machinery kicks back in and boring rationality returns. Unique mixtures of panic and excitement, where reality’s abandoned and the absurd and impossible seem the only viable option.

Last week while subwaying it up to work, I was sitting and reading just opposite one of the train doors. We’d just pulled into the 42nd street station and as the doors opened I heard this strange trickling pitter-patter of a sound. And as I glanced up, there it was: just outside the train, right on the platform, a major torrential downpour.

I looked around to see if anyone else noticed. But New York being New York, no one else seemed phased at all, and I looked back to confirm.

Rain?

…yes.

Underground?

…yes.

Conclusion?

…it rains underground now.

Turns out, it doesn’t. As the trained moved away, I could see the cracked water pipe scattering its rain of lies all across the platform, and everything became just as lame and boring as it was only a moment before. But for those few seconds? Man oh man, I was totally convinced. I'd even started to calculate how subterranean rainfall would affect the MTA.

For me, the best moments of self-perceived insanity involve superpowers (of course). Like when you go to pick something up that you’re expecting to be really heavy, but it actually turns out to be quite light. It’s in that moment, while lifting it upward much too, much too easily, when it suddenly occurs to you: you might probably be the strongest human alive. Somehow, you finally (FINALLY!) succeeded in unlocking the superpowers you’ve been so quietly and patiently expecting your entire boring life. Everyone will finally respect you and appreciate you and love you as you should be loved. Right after you put that box of feathers and doilies back up on that shelf where it belongs.