Most people who are insane, I think, aren't born insane, and they're not insane because of chemicals in their brains. I think most insane people are insane because something happened to make them insane. It's kind of funny to think about, and not funny in the humorous way.

 

Say someone likes vanilla. Now it could just be that they have a genetic predisposition to vanilla, like their taste buds are just wired to their brains that way, that they taste vanilla and it stimulates the pleasure center of their brain, or whatever, it doesn't really matter. The point is that it's perfectly normal and natural and sane. But it could be that a guy likes vanilla because his mother belongs to a cult that thinks vanilla is the earthly manifestation of a voodooo frog god of Madagascar, and used to give him vanilla before stripping him naked and scrubbing him with a Loufa while humming Beehtoven's 9th (that's the one they played in the first Die Hard movie). Then it becomes all Oedipal and Freudian and gross, and wrong in so many many ways.

 

Maybe that was a bad example of how people go insane. On the other hand, maybe it's a really really great example of how I'm insane.

 

When I was little, I used to sit for hours and stare at a tree or a car or something, or sit up in my room and stare out the window and listen to the radio. And I would wonder why I, John J. Doolittle, was born and was alive at this particular time in this particular place to stare out this particular window at this particular tree or whatever? And why wasn't I someone else, like my best friend or Abraham Lincoln or some kid in Africa? And if I was them, and I sat in their rooms and looked out their windows, what would I see? And why was I white and not black or Asian? And why was I a boy and not a girl or a full grown man? And why was I a person, and not a dog or a sponge or an oatmeal cookie? And if I was any of those things, who would be me? Would I still wonder the same things? Would they?

 

When I was little, I used to sit for hours and just stare at a tree or a rock or a car or something, or just sit up in my room and stare out the window and listen to the radio, And I would wonder why I, John J. Doolittle, was born and was alive at this particular place in this particular time to look out this particular window at that particular tree? And why wasn't I someone else, like my best friend or Abraham Lincoln or some kid in Africa? And if I was them, and I sat in their rooms and looked out their windows, what would I see? And why was I white and not black or Latino or Asian? And why was I a boy and not a girl or a full-grown man? And why was I a person and not a dog or a sponge or an oatmeal cookie? And if I was any of those other things, who would be me? Would I wonder the same things? Would they?

 

And then sometimes I would look at something and stare real hard and try to take in everything that was within my line of sight, and I would be really still and try to memorize it all. And then I would think, what if everything I'm seeing is really a picture on a TV screen that was pressed up real close against my head so that I couldn't see the edges of it? That would totally be weird. And then I took it one step further, and I wondered what if everyone I knew, or saw, or ever interacted with, was only real as long as they were within my direct line of vision? Sure, I might see them again in a day or hour, and they would remember doing things in that time, but maybe they would just be remembering things that I imagined them doing. Sure, I could even talk to them on the phone, but it was only me talking to tiny people who live in my brain and make up voices for me to hear while I think I'm talking on the phone.

 

But if none of that is true, then just imagine what that means. Say I look out the window and see a bird in a tree. This bird, at this time, is sitting in this tree. And whatever is going on in it's tiny bird-mind, is not "I am sitting in this tree, at this time, being looked at by John J. Doolittle, and I exist at this exact moment only to be looked at by him."  That bird is sitting there, whether I like it or not, no matter even if I'm looking or not. And it'll fly away, and I will never ever ever ever see it again. It will live it's life and eat worms or whatever birds do.

 

And even if I do see it again, I won't remember this exact moment. And even if I do remember it, I'll be looking at that bird in another time, and this exact moment is gone forever. Things are always changing and growing and dying and they'll never be exactly the same as they are at this exact moment in time.

 

So then I wonder, again, am I insane? I mean, one of these things has to be true, and since I've considered all possibilities, and I'm willing to accept either one, what does that make me? I mean, an insane person acts like nothing is real and nothing matters. But, an insane person could also decide that reality is defined by his own perceptions of it.

 

Anyway, I talk to people all the time who have problems, and almost all the time their problems seem to come from their childhoods. So then I start to wonder what insanity even means. I think about how Sally Field in that Sybil movie had all these problems because of all the strange crap that her mother did to her. And then I think, maybe the only reason I like spinach is because of some weird way my minbd associates some childhood trauma with old Popeye cartoons. Or maybe I only laugh at Laverne & Shirley reruns because when I hit puberty my first sex dream was about Cindy Williams, even though I didn't even find her particularly attractive. Aren't these just forms of insanity? I mean, they're just irrational means of repressing childhood trauma, and if a pubescent sex dream about Cindy Williams isn't considered traumatic, I don't know what is. I'm just starting to think that there is no sane and insane, and that it's all just varying levels of insanity.