Most people would never even consider this, but when you are intelligent or knowledgeable by nature you tend to know about and be aware of more things than most of the other people around you. It just comes as part of being intelligent or knowledgeable, which as I have written before isn’t always it’s cracked up to be.
So I’ll give you another example.
I am a joker, in case you haven’t figured that out by now. In fact, if you haven’t then you are probably a very confused and unhappy person because it isn’t like I even try to hide it.
But the older I get, and the more socially aware of my environment and my audience I have become, the more I have realized that sometimes (hell, most of the time) you really have to hold back on displaying just how knowledgeable or intelligent you really are. Because I can tell you, most people just do not understand or appreciate it.
So for example let’s say I had this really funny joke about chrono-synclastic infundibula. I could go around indiscriminately telling it to people as much as I wanted, but 99% of those people just wouldn’t get it, and out of those 99% probably another 99% would just assume that I was crazy and think no more of it.
Which if you consider it really calls into question the whole notion of being crazy in the first place.
So the following is a true story. This is something that happened to me years ago, but I have never forgotten it.
I had stopped into a national chain deli restaurant to have lunch. I won’t tell you the name of the place, but it’s the one who jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge. (See—there is another example of me just inviting people who have no idea what I am talking about to just assume I am crazy. Which I am not denying by the way. But anyway this story is not for those people.)
So I picked up my order at the deli counter (I’m pretty sure it was a Reuben), and started looking around for a place to sit.
Well, on one side of the restaurant was sitting what most people would not hesitate to describe as a crazy lady. She appeared to be having a very animated conversation with somebody sitting across the table from her.
Now I am not going to say there was nobody across the table from her, but if there was I sure couldn’t see them. I think she even had a place set out for them, with their own food and napkins and eating utensils.
Now this lady talking to somebody who appeared not to exist obviously disturbed everybody else in the restaurant to no small degree so that she had that whole side of the restaurant all to herself (and possibly her invisible friend), while everybody else had squeezed over to the other side just to get as far away from her as possible—as if she presented some sort of danger to them or something.
So of course I went and sat myself right down on her side of the restaurant where I could watch her.
Now it’s not like I was staring at her or even really observing her that closely. I was just there to eat my Reuben, though I must admit I did find the entire situation quite fascinating.
So we continued on with our meals, me and her and her invisible friend. I don’t really specifically remember anything she was saying. I honestly really wasn’t paying that close attention.
But at one point during the meal, all of a sudden, this woman just rips a huge fart. And I looked up at her, and she looked up at me, and at the same time we both just started laughing.
And I knew right then and there that that woman wasn’t crazy. It was all those people sitting on the other side of the restaurant who were the crazy ones.
Now most of you reading this probably think that makes me as crazy as she was. Which I certainly will not deny. But I’m also smart enough to know that whatever you may think about me has no bearing whatsoever on who or what I actually am, just as what all those people sitting on the other side of the restaurant thought of that lady had no bearing whatsoever on who or what she was, or whether she was actually crazy or not.
I never did see or hear her friend, but I can tell you I’ve learned enough in this life not to just assume there was nobody there just because I personally could not see or hear them.
(I’m also not assuming there was anybody there by the way.)
But all I know is that lady was no danger to me or anybody else in that restaurant, and anything that I might assume about her just says more about me than it does about her.
If you can understand that then I congratulate you.
If you cannot, then I pity you.
Because if I’ve learned anything in this life it’s that the people who believe themselves to be completely sane and not at all insane are the craziest ones of all.
And it’s THOSE people who are the dangerous ones who you have to watch out for.
And as for me, I would rather be on the side of some gassy-ass crazy lady talking to somebody who isn’t even there than to be on the side of the so-called “sane” ones who do not even realize that they are crazy.
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