Largely, I still am. Ask my wife and kids...
My grandparents were all "eccentric." Even my most normal grandmother suffered what would now be labeled as an "anxiety disorder." Her husband, my dad's dad, was a lunatic but he was also a wizard with metal, first deemed essential to the war effort as a World War II officer who kept a band of geniuses and misfits out of jail. Later he was an engineer for the Apollo moon project. He could make impossible things out of titanium. But during his down times he was just a depressed autistic spectrum freak. Odds are good, like Paul Erdős, he was addicted to amphetamines. Perversely, I think they helped him sleep and dream in numbers. My own reaction to drugs is the same. Mostly I sleep. Uppers, downers, it doesn't matter. My current prescriptions supposedly have a side effect of insomnia but I don't sleep without them.
My mom's parents were simply insane. As kids me and my siblings never could figure why adults were treating our grandparents like they were rational. My mom's parents were way out there but we never let it bother us much.
Give my mom a glass of champagne and she will tell you stories about her childhood... oh my! Her parents were welders. Both made lifetime careers of it. During the war they built ships. My mom's dad worked sixteen hour shifts. He came home and slept. Her mom worked eight hour shifts welding and eight hour shifts as a party girl entertaining sailors. Dance, sailor boy? (Some groping allowed.) My mom's daycare providers were hookers who were very protective of her, mama grizzly bear protective. My mom is a mama grizzly bear too, she'd kill to protect her kids or grandkids. Fortunately the whole lot of us are good at avoiding that kind of trouble. In middle school they'd send me to the library whenever I got in trouble because they were often afraid to call my mom. I like libraries. They are my refuge.
The first time I was asked to leave university it was for fighting with a teaching assistant. I never touched him but he was throwing things at me. Chalk, an eraser, then a book, and people fled the class and somebody called the campus police.
Yes, it was my fault. I was saying mean things. My first two words were "That's Bullshit!" and it escalated from there. I flunked that class, but when they allowed me to return to school I got an "A" in it, so I guess I learned something.
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