HAMILTON – Although it is now well into January, local maniac Andy Gerhard is still going around wishing people a “Happy New Year.”

“It came up completely out of the blue,” said Gerhard’s colleague Jacklyn Chung. “I mean, thanks for the wish, but you must have been abandoned by your father as a kid or something to say that at this point January.”

While experts agree that a New Year’s greeting early in January is “welcome” and “completely natural,” they allege that around January 14 “it starts to get a little weird,” and after January 17 it becomes a sign of “severe parietal lobe abnormality.”

In hindsight, Gerhard’s parents are not surprised by this development, recalling that “all the signs were there.”

“When Andy was little, he would always pour the milk before the cereal and put his socks and shoes on one foot before starting with the other,” said Andy’s mother Melinda Gerhard. “We really should not have expected or hoped for him to give appropriately-timed greetings in adulthood.”

At press time, Andy was placed in solitary confinement after wishing his friend a belated Happy Birthday two weeks after the birthday had passed.