Welcome to The Crazy

I possess a slight phobia of communicable disease for many reasons, none of which I care to discuss here (sorry). When I'm on the bus or walking on the street and I'm wearing a short sleeved shirt and someone (who I don't know and of whose habits of hygiene I am unaware) else's skin brushes against mine, I kind of get a little sick to my stomach. Or: I get a lot sick to my stomach. Like this morning, a woman on the bus kept sliding her arm back and forth along my arm and I very nearly passed out. But I didn't! Instead, I squeezed myself into the body of a nice smelling older softer full-body-covered grandmotherly sort seated on the other side of me.

It took everything out of me not to yell STOP TOUCHING ME I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU COULD HAVE AND THEN GIVE ME.

We all have our crazy sides and this is mine. Welcome and please wipe your feet and take a quick shower in bleach before you walk in.

Another slice of The Crazy is that when I get nervous, I stick my hands beneath my armpits and then I smell them.

I DO NOT. But I do love that skit from SNL.

What I do is I peel my lips. I bet you read that as 'pee my lips' which would have been both crazy and a ticket right into the elite employees of Cirque du Soleil.

Anyway. I have very large lips and without really noticing what I'm doing, I'll sit there in concentration or a state of nervous and...I'll peel at them. One of girlfriends pulls her hair out and the other scrapes her tooth (one tooth in particular, I really don't know why she chose that one or what it ever did to her). I'm only telling you that because I feel like being in good company with other Crazies right now.

A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting back and reading IHateMyselfBook when I started peeling my lips. And I peeled enough to bleed. Not a little, but a lot. It was as though I had taken a razor and sliced off a perfectly square portion of my lip. It wasn't very big, but seeing as how my mouth is the size of Arizona, it was big enough.

Remember The Crazy. Well...our lips are probably the worst place on which to need to develop a scab because every time we speak, laugh, smile, or breathe, we split the scab open again. Needless to say, it finally developed a scab long enough to heal. BUT for the duration of the week it took for it to heal, I was experiencing The Crazy every moment I was in public trying to control myself from screaming I DO NOT HAVE A COMMUNICABLE DISEASE, JUST A REALLY BAD HABIT. I SWEAR.

Instead of starting conversations with "hi, how are you", I began them with "let's talk about the giant elephant in the room, shall we? Let's talk about what happened to my lip" and even one with: "I don't have herpes, just a nervous habit, okay?" (to which the girl responded by placing my change on the counter rather than in my hand before she quickly turned to the next customer).

If you look at the photos from Montreal you can sort of see it; my wound was not-so-cleverly hidden beneath lipstick.

Anyone else want to share their Crazy?