The Time I Was Crazy In the spring of 2005 my doctor diagnosed me with a form of mental illness. He didn’t use those exact words, or anything like them, but he did refer me to the in-house psychologist at Kaiser, my health-care organization. I can take a hint. The psychologist listened to my story and came to the same conclusion: crazy. But like my doctor, she didn’t use the actual word. The psychologist suggested Valium and offered her educated guess that reducing my stress level might return me to some sort of normal behavior.

I declined the Valium because I didn’t feel crazy. I didn’t even feel all that stressed, or at least I didn’t feel that way until a doctor and a psychologist agreed that I was probably losing my mind. I certainly understood why both of these als leaned toward that diagnosis. By any measure, my recent behavior appeared crazy, even to me. My symptoms were that I had suddenly lost my ability to speak to human beings, even though I could speak normally while alone or when talking to my cat. My regular doctor and Kaiser’s in-house specialists had systematically eliminated each of the more likely causes for my speech problem. Allergies? Nope. Common respiratory problem? Nope. Acid reflux? Nope. Tumors or polyps in my throat? Nope. Stroke? Nope. Neurological problem? Nope. I was in seemingly perfect health, except that I had suddenly lost the ability to speak to other humans. I could speak normally to my cat. I could speak normally when alone. I could recite a poem. But on the phone I could barely squeeze out an intelligible sentence. I had some sort of weird social laryngitis. Bottom line: crazy. Insanity is always a reasonable diagnosis when you’re dealing with writers and artists. Sometimes the only real difference between crazy people and artists is that artists write down what they imagine seeing. In the past few decades, hardly a week has gone by without a reader of my blog questioning my mental

health. I understand that; I’ve read my writing too. The rational part of my brain knows that if enough people suggest I might be crazy, I need to consider the possibility. I also have some craziness in my genes. My mother’s father spent some time in the loony bin, or whatever it was called at the time. If I recall, he was the recipient of electroshock treatments. Apparently they didn’t work, because my mother and grandmother later left him forever, taking nothing but the clothes on their backs, as he chased them down the road with a blunt object in his hands and, apparently, homicide on his mind. I couldn’t rule out the possibility that I inherited whatever caused Grandpa to flip out. Living as a presumptive crazy person was hard work. When I tried speaking to humans, my vocal cords clenched involuntarily on certain consonants, giving the impression of a very bad cell-phone call that drops every third syllable. Asking for a Diet Coke at a restaurant turned into “. . . iet oke.” I usually ended up with a sympathetic look and a regular Coke. Or worse, the server would say, “I’m fine. Thanks for asking.” And I would get no beverage at all. It was a confounding, maddening problem. I could sing fluently, albeit hideously, which was entirely normal for me. And I could recite memorized pieces without much of a hitch. But I couldn’t produce a normal, intelligible sentence in the context of

health. I understand that; I’ve read my writing too. The rational part of my brain knows that if enough people suggest I might be crazy, I need to consider the possibility. I also have some craziness in my genes. My mother’s father spent some time in the loony bin, or whatever it was called at the time. If I recall, he was the recipient of electroshock treatments. Apparently they didn’t work, because my mother and grandmother later left him forever, taking nothing but the clothes on their backs, as he chased them down the road with a blunt object in his hands and, apparently, homicide on his mind. I couldn’t rule out the possibility that I inherited whatever caused Grandpa to flip out. Living as a presumptive crazy person was hard work. When I tried speaking to humans, my vocal cords clenched involuntarily on certain consonants, giving the impression of a very bad cell-phone call that drops every third syllable. Asking for a Diet Coke at a restaurant turned into “. . . iet oke.” I usually ended up with a sympathetic look and a regular Coke. Or worse, the server would say, “I’m fine. Thanks for asking.” And I would get no beverage at all. It was a confounding, maddening problem. I could sing fluently, albeit hideously, which was entirely normal for me. And I could recite memorized pieces without much of a hitch. But I couldn’t produce a normal, intelligible sentence in the context of

syndicated cartoonist for Dilbert, I was a highly paid al speaker. And I had an event scheduled in a few weeks, the first since I’d lost my ability to talk. I couldn’t predict whether my voice would work for my canned speech in the same way I could sing or repeat a poem. Would my vocal cords slam shut on stage and stay that way? Would I stand in front of a thousand people and yammer incomprehensibly? I informed my client of the situation by e-mail and gave his organization a chance to cancel. They decided to forge ahead and take the risk. I agreed to take the chance too. Luckily for me, I don’t feel embarrassment the way normal people do, which I’ll discuss in an upcoming chapter. The prospect of humiliation in front of a thousand strangers, many of whom would likely be video recording the disaster, wasn’t as much of a showstopper as you might think. It was worth the risk to me because I needed to know what would happen with my voice in that context. I needed to find out the pattern. Would my voice work if I presented a mostly memorized routine in front of a thousand people? There was only one way to find out.