The Jury Is In: Women Are Crazy

Women are SO SOOOOOOOOOO Crazy - but that's usually because men make us that way!

Crazy is just a stone throw from needing the straight jacket...

I'm not going to say I have never had an episode of 'crazy' in my life that I've looked back on with a bit of embarrassment.  Chalk it up to experience and learning, and move on.   Thankfully, for the most part, I am able to keep an even keeled head on my shoulders.  I have a passionate personality, full of emotion for sure, but 'Crazy' rarely shows herself.  I try to keep it that way.  However, my few prior experiences definitely lend themselves to helping my friends step off the Crazy ledge!   We women have all been there.  

In case you're not keeping track, today = Thursday.   Which means if you're single and female, you have a weekend ahead of yourself where you have to figure out ahead of time what fabulous activities you're going to engage in because if you don't, you know that you will likely end up hanging out with your married friends drinking boxed wine from a straw.

Unfortunately, if figuring it out ahead of time involves some sort of a date, it usually requires at least two people, one of whom (unless you're gay) is male.

And that's how the crazy starts.

My friend Heather calls me this morning, sounding a little erratic.   "ohmygod i'm worried," confides Heather.

"What?  Why?  Did He say something bad?", I ask.

"No, I emailed Him at..." Heather looks at her sent email files and over the phone reads to me, "11:41 a.m."

"Heather! it's not even 12:30 yet!" I gasp, feigning shock and dismay at such crazy behavior.

(Because what woman on the planet would EVER start worrying about why He hasn't called as soon as she hits send?   No, to do that would be crazy...)

"I know... but...I was waiting...but then, well.."  ... she was hemming and hawing .... "I called and left him a message, too."

GAH!  we are so crazy.

"NO NO NO NO NO," I say, all helpful-like. "Honey, you can't DO that."

"I know, but Carole, he makes me crazy!" 

Heather had her first date with Him last weekend. Crazy starts right away.

She tells me she is going to lunch and will call me later "if backup is needed."

"Just settle down!  Don't go nutty on the poor guy.  He'll call you!  Give him a break - he is probably busy", I say, letting the cool wind of reason and calm enter into her force field.

3 hours later my phone rings.  It's Crazy (aka Heather).

"Carole, can I be crazy for a sec?" asks Heather.

"Go ahead," I say.

"Ok. He said he was going to call me this afternoon. But I missed a call from the 410 area code, and there's no message. What if it's Him?  Do you think it is?"

"I don't know. Maybe. Probably."

"Why didn't He leave a message!?", she asks in agony.

"What's the big deal?  He'll call back.  Relax."

"Can you do me a favor?" she asks.

and here comes the crazy.....

"What?"

"Can you call the number and see who it is?"

"Um, is that a good idea? Don't you think that's weird?  If I call the number, what am I supposed to ask?"

"Just say you got the wrong number."

"but..."   I love that I am not the crazy one today. I speak in a tone of exaggerated patience - "If he just says 'hi' and then I say, 'oh sorry, wrong number', that doesn't help us at all."

"Carole just call it."

Someone sane needed to put her foot down.  (CAROLE is the sane one?  How refreshing!)

"Heather.  NO.  I'm not calling him and you need to chill out.  Look at you.  Would YOU want to go out with YOU??  You're a grown woman for God's sake, stop acting 16!"

Heather sighs into the phone.  I feel Crazy starting to exorcise from her body.  While talking her off the ledge and away from Crazy, I google the digits and find out that the number belongs to the guy she thinks.


"According to google, it was Him", I say, calmly.

"WHY didn't he leave a message!?"

"Heather, I don't know. I don't know why guys don't leave messages. I don't know why guys take two or three or six days to call...."

I hear Heather sigh into the phone again.  I'm not sure I am helping her, but at least she knows I understand her frustration.  Men as a species are, indeed, FRUSTRATING.

I also know that the women I know -- whether experienced or inexperienced or playing by The Rules or completely ignoring them -- are all, in one way or another, waiting for that call.  And being crazy in the meantime.   Or at one time in their life, they were.

Ah, Thursdays.