One of the songs my mother used to sing, maybe one of my favorite of her songs is Patsy Cline’s version of the Willie Nelson song Crazy. I don’t have a recording of my mom doing it, I don’t think, so you’ll have to deal with the almost as good version, Ms. Cline’s.

Crazy, I’m crazy for feeling so lonely

I’m crazy, crazy for feeling so blue

I knew you’d love me as long as you wanted

And then someday you’d leave me for somebody new

Worry, why do I let myself worry?

Wondering what in the world did I do?

Crazy for thinking that my love could hold you

I’m crazy for trying and crazy for crying

And I’m crazy for loving you

Crazy for thinking that my love could hold you

I’m crazy for trying and crazy for crying

And I’m crazy for loving you.

I wish I could share my mother’s version. Sorry about that.

Growing up, listening to that and the countless other songs with crazy in the lyrics, I had a slant to my understand of the word. I knew it was bad to call people crazy in a hurtful way, but my mom was crazy. She’d say as much. I was crazy. Growing up, crazy was another way to say intense and passionate and weird and wonderful and out of control. Crazy wasn’t always good, but in my family, crazy was inevitable and even welcome. You don’t love someone, you’re crazy about them. You don’t have an idea, you have a crazy plan. That outfit is crazy! He had a kind of crazy look in his eyes (negative, or suggesting inspiration.) Crazy was regrettable in polite society but required to be an artist.

Suffice to say, this meaning in my head does not necessarily jive with the word and it’s meaning else wise. For plenty of people crazy is a much more complicated word. Maybe it sometimes means some of those things, but also and mostly it’s a word of shame. A word used by abusers and neglectful caretakers. For many, it’s a word to hide away from for fear it will stick to a person like leaprosy and isolate them. The word crazy, as a label, can mean job loss and homelessness because in our year 2017, it’s still kind of okay to discriminate against the neuroatypical for some reason.

For me, crazy is a label I can bare safely, and using it is often a stress release. Crazy-cool is in my internal lexicon and while I’ll be careful about its usage it’s still there and I can’t just vacuum it out of my brain. I am crazy, by my definition and probably by the prerogative definition too. But but but! I can also appreciate that the common experience is not my own. For many people there is a word shape wound on them that gets picked open every time someone used the word causally. Especially if they are unprepared.

“Okay” you’re thinking “but what does this all have to do with writing or giant robots?” I’m glad you asked.