Crazy

Is crazy a thing or a scar? That's my question today.

My current crazy is like one of those cool race tracks with HO scale cars. It sure looked fun when I picked it out. Well, it looked fun to some messed up part of me just like the race track promises dizzying good times. But you build the ill-fitting track (good luck having all the pieces you need) and then you run the crappy little cars around in a circle. IF you are very good or very lucky.

Anytime you could do more than one lap, you were considered skilled. I don't know of anyone who really spent time racing these things. The rheostat that controlled the speed of each car was lousy. The car's electrical pick-up was lousy. The little spongy tires were lousy. It was lousy. You spent time messing with every little thing except the racing itself.

After a kind relative gave this to you, your life held a new, shining excitement. You carefully set the track up, read the instructions and then your beautiful expectation frittered into a dull reality. Lousy, nothing like it looked like from the box. But the thing is, you still had to play with it. You had to dutifully feign excitement as the cars spun out again and again after vrooming fifteen inches.

The quicker among us stuffed that thing into the box and returned it. The slower kept plugging away and eventually stuffed it into the back of the closet, a toy of shame. Some of us keep thinking that if I just had that fatter set of tires on my wee cars, then the toy race track would be great.

Sound familiar?