Don't ever...call me...crazy

I once had a girlfriend who I was having a discussion with, and she said something pretty zany. I don't remember what she said, but my response was playful in saying, "ha ha, you're crazy", as I would have said to any of my other friends or family if they uttered the same words. It was something as simple as, I don't like peanut butter, and because I love peanut butter so much, I would say, "you're crazy". Her follow up to that though, was a dead serious statement of, "Don't ever...call me...crazy". My instinctive, immediate response to that was "Only crazy people say that". After that was ten minutes of dead silence where neither of us could socially lubricate the situation.

For whatever reason I said "you're crazy", I did not mean it like, "you belong in an insane asylum", or even, "you're mentally ill". No, I meant it as every person says it to other people that they are comfortable with. After saying it though, neither of us felt anything close to comfort. If you have never thought of yourself as "crazy", whatever that means, then you would not mind at all if someone called you crazy. The same would go if you are a heterosexual, and someone calls you gay, it probably wouldn't bother you at all. The only people who would be seriously bothered by being called anything, are people who have personally questioned that previously.

I think the social label that has been created for "crazy" is just misunderstood. Someone who stands on the street corner and yells to strangers how the world is going to end soon, would be a very legitimate case of crazy. Sure, the world is going to end relatively soon, and everyone knows that deep down, but yelling it to strangers on the street is what classifies that person as crazy. If you have troubles with a legitimate mental illness, you might see the word "crazy" as an attack on you. Nine times out of ten though, it is a playful comment.

I would never call someone crazy if they had been admitted to a mental hospital. I wouldn't even use the term with someone who is having mild emotional issues. I don't use the word crazy to refer to any form of mental illness. I would only use the term when speaking with someone who I am close to, who I would assume is completely aware of the context. Somehow I didn't know the girl I was dating well enough to predict her reaction to a friendly comment. We rarely know people as well as we think we know them, and that is confirmed quite frequently for many people.