The Year of the Nut

I don't know what it is about me and crazies. Whether it is my own family, which we all know has it's fair share of full out nuts, or people I've let into my life. It's always been this way for me. I have a tendency to bring home friends like stray puppies, current audience excluded of course.

I don't mean the life long friends that have seen me act like a complete idiot myself.  I mean the people that just kind of pass in and out of my life. The ones that never make it through to the long haul. The fact that not every single person who has been in my life doesn't stay isn't my issue at all. In fact it's great.  I really feel that people I've met and who don't end up staying in my life, is good, important to personal growth, right?  I don't want every Tom, Dick and Harry I've ever met sticking around forever, sometimes they just serve a purpose at a specific time.  They are there, and then they are gone for a reason.  And sadly for me it's more often because they are nuts, really, nuts!!

This has been quite a constant in my life, and I am baffled about how it happens. It's the same recipe for disaster every time, so you'd think after thirty odd years I would have some idea how things will go with some people. That my skills for spotting the nut jobs would be fine tuned. Well, sadly they are not. Time and again, I've been sucked in by the power of the nut. They come in all sorts of packages. They show themselves as slightly questionable sorts of people, tittering on the brink of what would seem completely normal, with just a scent of something being off.

My husband has this keen sense and can spot someone just on the edge, from a brief first meeting. But again my save the stray personality kicks in, and I always tell him he needs to be more open, understanding, not so paranoid. Well, sad to say, but I'm usually wrong. He never says I told you so, he just patiently explains to me how crazy nut jobs can only think they are normal, how else could they exist? Yeah, again, I know he's right.

But then there is my family....whom I've only ever known to be totally smacked out, wildy crazy at the best of times. So here is where I falter the most. I play into it, put up with it, and probably contribute to it somehow...still can't figure that one out, but it must be something I'm doing. It's hard to recognize this kind of nuttiness in one's own family, you must understand, since it's the only thing you've ever known.  Recognizing it for what it is becomes increasingly difficult.

Well now as I get older I have decided that I must be a little more choosy about the people whom I get to know, and allow into my life.  It will make for less lively conversation, but in the end, it will save me the inevitable feeling of embarrassment, when again I have to admit that I just can't tell normal people from full out nuts.

So cheers to those friends who have either tricked me into believing they are completely sane or have somehow managed to allow me to find some normal people to hang out with, but most of all thanks for sticking around when I am a total nut myself.