in the eye of the beholder

beach people are crazy. this is what i thought when i moved to this beach community less than a year ago. and as i got to know a lot of these people, i discovered that they are every bit as crazy as i thought they were. and then something happened. i started to fit in. it was easy enough to do - the beach is an easy place to get comfortable and the people, as crazy people often are, were welcoming and entertaining. with my pre-existing affinity for beer and drinking in general, i already had one foot in the door. but the realization that i fit in at the beach caused me to step back and examine my own mental well-being. i had always thought of myself as the one in my family who had escaped the genetic insanity that afflicts most of my family members, the women in particular - the most notable being my crazy aunt sherry, who was arguably just as crazy before she was shot in the head (but that is a story for another blog entry). the problem with evaluating your own sanity is that if you are crazy, your perspective is skewed. so i decided this was a futile undertaking, but not before i had diagnosed myself as having generalized anxiety with obsessive compulsive tendencies - all perfectly manageable with self-help books and alcohol. i also decided that i must be narcissistic because i was spending so much time contemplating my own mental state and because i read an article saying that the most active facebook members are narcissists. but the endeavor was not a complete waste of time because i learned some things about myself and more importantly, i learned that you can judge a book by its cover, particularly if the cover is crazy.