THE OTHER SIDE OF MADNESS

You might not think there is flip side to madness, but I know there is. And let me tell you it is even more scary than the side of madness that is obvious.

Normally, madness in terms of insanity is pretty obvious. The person might or might not accept their version of life is crazy, but it is generally pretty easy to tell.

So you can at least feel comfortable if you are talking with someone that is carrying on a conversation with a bunch of invisible friends, you don't have to worry about what the person says. You just wait for the perfect opportunity to run away and hide. Or if you are fortunate enough you can sick the person on some other poor slob. That solves your problem and with me that is all that matters.

What is the concern is dealing with the people who are insane, but appear to be normal. They can really sneak up on you and drive you nuts. I think it is sort of a rule that if the person lives on the other side of madness they get lonely and need company. Only you can't stay there and be sane, so that means you have to eventually join them in their lunacy.

Basically we are talking about people with the illusion of sanity. Just enough to function in the work place. Only they just do a great job of keeping that demented side of their nature hidden till the time they can control any longer.

This will happen at the most unexpected times and generally in the most unexpected situations if not totally embarrassing. I tell you there is nothing more awkward that trying to explain to a citizen why some city employee was sitting at his or her desk totally naked with their underwear on their head while singing show tunes.

And if by chance that was to happen right after you had a meeting with them and they seemed normal it might only make you feel even more dumbfounded. Making that additionally complicated is if in that meeting you granted them additional responsibility, including being in charge of some financial aspect of city business.

You might think I'm making this part up, but believe me I wish I was. Even now as I write about it I still have trouble imagining how one second this person was just as usual as good be. Then five minutes later I'm getting a panicked call from security.

I'm just glad this isn't something that happens every day. It does happen a lot more than i wish, but I'm grateful they do get sort of spaced out enough for us to get a breather in between the moments of disaster.

The main reason I suppose this even came to me as a posting was because I just had one of those moments yesterday. What was really depressing was the fact that it was the same person I described above. In this case the person apparently ran out of his medication. Hardly a way we wanted to fine out. I'm grateful that today he does seem okay. Although I do have security keeping an eye on him. After all, he was sort of talking kind of strange on the subject of underwear.