I recently created a Twitter contest challenging people to write in the craziest thing they’ve ever done to win some of my books. This is a question I ask almost everyone at some point in our relationship as I wonder, what could be more interesting? Maybe I say this because I’m crazy but I can’t imagine a better conversation opener. Some people sent in fantastic replies, here are some examples:
A co worker asked me to guess what veg he grew in his garden i lost it and that was my last day I worked
After recovering from a manic episode, I met a guy in Bangladesh, got married 3 days later. Will be 10yrs together!
These kind of answers make me want to go out, hunt them down and drag them back to my house for a dinner party.
Other people had an interesting response, that they were too afraid of exposing this information in case anyone at their work found out and they might be dismissed.
I didn’t say it had to be crazy as in mentally ill –‘setting the neighbourhood on fire’. It could have been funny crazy as in – ‘when I was ten I put sardines in all the lighting fixtures at school so they had to evacuate the building.’ (This is a true story of something I did to get out of taking a test). It’s so revealing that as far as ‘acting crazy’ is concerned, we still live in a climate of fear not a million miles from the old days when they burnt you at the stake for being weird (See witch). I’m not encouraging anyone to ‘come out’ because the laws are against us. 22% of employees felt they were dismissed because of mental illness so this isn’t our imagination. They ask on some job applications if you’ve ever suffered from mental illness and to be honest if I was looking for work I’d check the ‘no’ box because I’ve got mouths to feed. So this is where we are, but hopefully if people start talking and meeting and eventually being brave enough to come out, the laws will have to change as they did with the Gay Movement. But how revealing it is to see how many of us still hunker in fear of being found out.
A co worker asked me to guess what veg he grew in his garden i lost it and that was my last day I worked
After recovering from a manic episode, I met a guy in Bangladesh, got married 3 days later. Will be 10yrs together!
These kind of answers make me want to go out, hunt them down and drag them back to my house for a dinner party.
Other people had an interesting response, that they were too afraid of exposing this information in case anyone at their work found out and they might be dismissed.
I didn’t say it had to be crazy as in mentally ill –‘setting the neighbourhood on fire’. It could have been funny crazy as in – ‘when I was ten I put sardines in all the lighting fixtures at school so they had to evacuate the building.’ (This is a true story of something I did to get out of taking a test). It’s so revealing that as far as ‘acting crazy’ is concerned, we still live in a climate of fear not a million miles from the old days when they burnt you at the stake for being weird (See witch). I’m not encouraging anyone to ‘come out’ because the laws are against us. 22% of employees felt they were dismissed because of mental illness so this isn’t our imagination. They ask on some job applications if you’ve ever suffered from mental illness and to be honest if I was looking for work I’d check the ‘no’ box because I’ve got mouths to feed. So this is where we are, but hopefully if people start talking and meeting and eventually being brave enough to come out, the laws will have to change as they did with the Gay Movement. But how revealing it is to see how many of us still hunker in fear of being found out.
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