A Certain Kind Of Crazy

We live in a world of grays.

Hardly anything is black or white, hardly anything can be neatly divided into categories. Nothing is this or that. Things are this with a little of that, mostly that with some this. A thisthat mishmash.

Psychology is a perfect example of this. Though the discipline is often maligned for being overly compartmental, any decently competent psychologist knows that there is no way to morally put people into boxes and treat them as binary yes/no units. It is no longer sufficient to label an individual with any mental condition. If someone has a condition, it must be determined how severe the condition is, what other conditions the individual has that affect it, what the family situation is, what the socio-economic factors are and so on. Nothing is absolute, everything is relative.

But then, sometimes, you come across someone that is so "just crazy" that their craziness can be neatly described with bulletpoints.

There is a man I see in the street on my way home from work who:

-dresses only in bright red, yellow and black.

-holds up a bright yellow T-square at hip level.

-marches back and forth across the street at the same intersection every day.

-holds an opened bright red umbrella over his head, rain or shine (in fact, I've never seen him do it in the rain).

-has a giant, incredibly detailed, seemingly laser-printed cardboard picture of a man's head attached to his chest.

-occasionally sits in a folding chair in the middle of the intersection that affects two lanes of traffic.

-keeps a milk crate on a manhole cover in the middle of the intersection. If the milk crate is knocked askew from its position directly over the manhole cover by oncoming traffic, he will methodically rise from his chair and deliberately pick up the crate and replace it to its original position, regardless of how much traffic he is affecting.

And I think that about does it.