crazy » CoupleDumb

The Spot The Crazy Book

Oct 082010

It is Friday, the end of spot the crazy week. By the way, when you say the words ‘spot the crazy’, say them like a game show host announcing the start of the show. It’s a lot more fun that way. So, how are you going to spot the crazy if you do not have a playbook?

Paul says: Psychologists use a book called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of Mental Disorders to diagnose patients. This book has the rules for each mental disorder, saying that a client needs to have 5 out of 7 little crazy behaviors to be categorized as a big kind of crazy.

So why am I writing about this instead of Lee? Because for her the DSM is a tool of the trade, like a rake to a gardener or a scalpel to a surgeon, but for me it is magical, akin to reading your horoscope or seeing a psychic. I have read both the DSM and the DSM Casebook, the latter of which was a storybook of dysfunctional behaviors and thought patterns and, in my hands, was like reading a fairytale where all of the characters were nutty as squirrel shit. I loved it.

The natural reaction to reading the DSM is that you look through it and say ‘I do that!’ then you show it to friends and claim that you have this or that disorder. Generally speaking, if you do have something diagnosable, you are not going to recognize it from the book description. That seems to be the first test: can you spot your own crazy? If not, then you have it.

Let me give you an example. I had a boss who needed to go to therapy. He had to go to therapy because he was ape shit insane. After pushing his therapist for a diagnosis for the better part of an hour, she said that he might be narcissistic, which is one of the personality disorders. Please remember that, although I work the financial side, most of my career is in the social services, which means that I can’t throw a rock without hitting a therapist. Disclaimer: no matter how much you want to, do not hit a therapist with a rock. So my boss stormed into one of the local therapist’s office, pulled down the DSM and proceeded to make a case about how he was not a narcissist. It took him about three hours to tell all of the middle management and higher personnel that his therapist was an intellectual midget compared to him, how he was a better psychologist then her, and that she was just jealous of (and probably infatuated with) him. In case you can’t see this coming, he needed nine behaviors to be classified as narcissistic personality disorder. He demonstrated all nine in the first fifteen minutes of his three-hour tirade, the rest being frosting on the cuckoo cake.

Now that you have an example, let’s put a couple into context. Monday we wrote about the dramatic crazy. These are the cluster B (dramatic) personality disorders: narcissistic, histrionic, antisocial, and borderline. These are the ones that seemed so fun at the beginning until they cut their hair to look like yours and suggest that your kids call her ‘Mama 2’. On Tuesday, we wrote about kids and, for the most part, learning disabilities, which are in a whole different category. Since children are little sociopaths by their very nature, you can’t diagnose them with personality disorders but you can tell if they can’t make eye contact or if they are writing letters backwards at the age of 12. Yesterday was another category; addiction. Thanks to Celebrity Rehab, we have a pretty good idea of what that looks like. On Wednesday, we looked at Rick Sanchez. Unfortunately, the DSM doesn’t have a category called ‘stupidity disorders’. If it did, you could find him there.

Lee says: I need to refrain from diagnosing because people may construe that as something more than just making fun of people. However, I can say that Paul is correct about his diagnoses and there is a diagnosis for Rick Sanchez that he may have already mentioned above. Not that I’m saying anything. I think that Rick is a great guy with a heart of gold (and allegedly a cluster B personality disorder).

Celebrity Smackdown: Rick Sanchez

Celebrity Smackdown

Oct 062010

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c

Hurty Sanchez

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Rally to Restore Sanity

This week CoupleDumb is playing the game -Spot the Crazy. This week’s Crazy has to be the person who committed air-wave suicide. This week’s Crazy has to be the person who spent 48 minutes on the radio making sure that everyone knows that he’s a bigot. This week’s Crazy has to be a man who defended his bigoted point of view while labeling all his critics as bigots after sharing his heart wrenching story of being born ‘a poor Cuban child’. Of course, I am speaking of Rick Sanchez and before anybody gets their panties in a wad over this Smackdown, I will remind all of you that I am Cuban, my parents speak English with a very thick accent and I still eat pork as often as possible.

So in case you have been living under a rock this weekend, the one crazy story that kind of nudged the important news of gay suicides to one side, was Rick Sanchez losing his shit on the radio last week. After this interview, where Rick suffered from oral diarrhea that could not be stopped by the interviewer, Mr. Sanchez lost his job at CNN.

Wow! Those lovely stories of being treated like a dog by some white lady who would not give him water and how his Dad turned that trauma into a lesson of how in this country you have to work hard but that there are people in this country who will say that you aren’t at their level/quality, have proven to be self fulfilling. In other words, his crazy was programmed early on. We’ll call it the ‘chip on your Shoulder Crazy’. You know the guy who has to prove he deserves what he has and how hard he worked and how easy you have it and his success is earned and yours is given to you and you can never understand the hardship, blah, blah, blah.

Rick! Pull up a chair and take a quick listen here. Here is some free advice from a therapist. You had a prime spot as an anchor on CNN and still you bitched about how some people at CNN saw you as only a Hispanic reporter? You weren’t being discriminated. You were being an ungrateful bastard. It must be a total pain to live with you. As for the Jews not being a minority and not thinking they suffer the same prejudices other minorities do, I would like to direct your attention to entire countries, hate groups, international terrorist groups and small business owners in Middle America who would rather see a Jew dead rather than alive. Shame on you and so many other bone-headed idiots like yourself who have just equated having success with no longer being a minorities. By that definition, you are no longer a minority.

And now the hard part. Rick, John never made fun of you because you are Cuban. John Stewart did not poke fun at your inability to pronounce a word (like annals) because you are a slightly accented Hispanic. He poked fun at you because you are a talking head who thinks he is smart and is really not. You have been lucky, mi amigo. You have parlayed your handsomeness into a good job, acere. You have duped the white man into thinking you are a whitey like him and maybe the John Stewart-like people confused you for one of them because you were from Miami, compa. However, Rick, you, as we say in our country, are a ‘come mierda’ (shit eater) who just fucked up a sweet gig. If you had any doubt of why John Stewart made fun of you, you have just proved it. Who else would be so stupid to spout such incredible shit?!

I warn all out there who may know a ‘chip on your shoulder’ type of crazy person. They have something to prove and will bull-doze their way through your life trying to prove it. Rick, you need some reality therapy. Your parents weren’t oppressed by the man. Your parents chose not to assimilate, thus never learning the language, and instead of making the effort chose to live victims of the system built by the white man. Hey, my parents came in the early 60s too with no one here, worked 3 jobs at a time and in less than 4 years were opening their first factory. I will add that it was a Jew who first partnered with my Dad. No silver spoon. No Sugar Daddy. Simple hard work and adapting to the system. So please, Ricky, don’t blame the ‘Man’ or the ‘Jew’ for your lack of money at an early age. Be a real American. Blame your parents!

Crazy Of Our Loins

Kids and why you can't kill them

Oct 052010

Our Tuesdays are now sponsored by La Scuola school. Please take a look at their site at www.reggioinspired.com and give them a call at (305) 278-9555.
This week we are taking up a magnifying glass to the crazies, little off, and not quite normal people in our lives. When they are cousins that are removed as many times as possible, it is fun to place the ‘spot the crazy’ game but what about if the person in your life that is a little off center sprang from your own loins?

Paul says: Before I start pointing fingers at our kid’s mental acuity, I need to do a little preface. There is such a thing as normal. Normal is a mathematical term used in statistical analysis. If you have a nice bell curve, normal is the line down the center. Lee’s sister is a school psychologist and she wrote an article on this for ParentDumb. In the article she says, ‘Development is pretty much the same all over the globe. Children learn to smile at around 3 to 4 weeks of age, begin to roll over at age 3 to 4 months, etc. This is true here in the US, as it is deep in the heart of the Amazon jungle. Therefore, we already have a set of behaviors that developmental professionals have deemed “normal”. It’s just “normal” because it happens consistently over and over again at the same age(s).’

The other thing that you need to remember is that our daughter has multiple disabilities that, by definition, means she is not normal. Since she is blind, on the bell curve of sight, she is way to the left, playing catch with Stevie Wonder and Andrea Bocelli. Yet she is extremely successful, going to college next year.

One of the reasons that she is such a success is that she is stubborn and we are aware. She has done some amazing stuff with her life so far and much of this comes from her inbred self-determination, but some of this is because of Lee and me. Yes, after almost 18 years of saying, ‘Aww shucks, it was all her’, I’m giving us some credit too.

Somewhere along the line, we looked at our daughter and saw that she was not sitting on the top of the bell curve. In some cases she was blowing past her developmental milestones and in others… Don’t ask her to catch a ball.

So when do you look at your kid and start playing the ‘spot the crazy’ game with them? Whether it is bad crazy like Junior has an unnatural liking for sharp objects, or the good crazy with little Suzie finding eigenvalues before naptime, it is a parents duty to be honest with themselves and do what is needed to achieve the best for their child.

One of the other things that my sister-in-law said was to find resources. ‘Contact your nearest developmental center, usually run by your school district. These places usually have a diagnostic center where they can do developmental screenings and that may be all you need to put your worries to rest. If more testing is needed, and yes, we do evaluate little ones, 5 and under, then a full evaluation will take place that helps determine the levels your child is at and if there are any delays that need remediation.’

This has been a difficult post to write because we all want to support our children with words of potential and hope. Unfortunately, it is the greatest disservice a parent can do by ignoring the obstacles that damper this wonderful potential.

One of the last things that Lee’s sister says, ‘Don’t give up hope. You will find the answers you seek about your child. When you find that person with the answers that make sense to you as the parent, remember their name and use them as a resource throughout your child’s life. Let them be your “Go To Person” when you have questions or concerns.’

Just because you have spotted the crazy, doesn’t mean that the crazy owns you. This rule goes for friends, children, spouse, or even spotting the crazy in you. Trust me, I have all kinds of crazy running through me…OK, galloping through me like a wild stallion on PCP.