Three weeks ago, we talked about the various levels of the word, “mad.” One of those levels was the “different drumbeat” kind of mad – someone who marches to such a different beat that more behaviorally-centrist folks seem to regard them as people who are two or three French fries short of a biggie-sized combo. This condition is considerably less than full-blown “nuts,” but it’s a notch or two away from eccentric, which is probably the closest to normal.
And Lord knows, most Southerners are eccentric. Your compiler and his wife have a dish towel in their kitchen which reads, “You don’t have to drive me crazy. I’m already within walking distance.” That’s just general eccentricity, which is cherished in the South. As has oft been said in this day of memes and GIFs, “We in the South don’t hide eccentricity; we invite it to sit on the front porch and enjoy a cocktail.”
There are folks that don’t have enough sense to pound sand in a rat hole, as well as those who don’t have enough sense to come in out of the rain. (Your compiler’s late father used to say of folks he thought really lacked judgment, “He doesn’t have enough sense to come in out of a shower of crow bars.”) So the scale whic...