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“Crazy is as crazy does.”

After serving on the street tonight with The King’s Jubilee, I had occasion to recall a homeless man, Brad, whom I met almost twenty years ago on a similar late spring evening. He was under 25, white, of slight build, literate. He had just found himself homeless. His mom had moved in with her boyfriend and there was no room for him. His dad had disappeared several years before. Brad was afraid of what might happen to him on the streets. Nothing in his life had prepared him for this. He felt completely vulnerable.

The next week, Brad came to eat with us again. This time, he was all disheveled and he was talking to himself and arguing with himself the whole time he was in the line. I was able to speak with him privately after everyone had eaten and the crowd had dispersed. He told me that a couple of the old hands on the street told him that the number one rule of the street is that you never mess with a crazy person. So he decided to start acting crazy as a defense, so nobody would mess with him. He learned to survive and cope on the street. I tried to direct him to programs that might help him get off the street, but space was very limited, and he didn’t fit into any of the usual categories.

After a few months, Brad stopped coming by to eat with us. A few more months passed and he showed up again. He was acting like a full-blown, psychotic, paranoid schizophrenic or someone on a very bad trip. The problem was he wasn’t acting anymore. He had fully inhabited the role he had chosen and had forcibly driven himself crazy; like method acting gone terribly wrong. I still see him from time to time. Some nights he is better than others. Instead of the frightened young man, he is now a quite aggressive 40 something man and is quite direct in asking for or demanding what he wants. It reminds me of a program I heard on the radio about bullies. A psychologist described aggression as preemptive fear.

The irony with Brad is that his crazy behavior is not irrational. On one level, it has served him well. He is still alive after spending almost 20 years on the street, because no one messes with a crazy person.

I painted Brad’s portrait six years after the article was first published. It is for sale at www.shoutforjoy.net. It is included in the book “Other People’s Children“.

Thursday was reading night.

In our home, when I was growing up, Thursday night was reading night. This was never, ever announced or even mentioned. It was never enforced. None of us kids were even aware of it. However, it was intentional, consistent and disciplined. My mom, B.J., told me about it when I was in college. I asked her about it, because I had realized that I had never seen any of the TV shows that were on Thursday nights.

My folks wanted to make sure that all four of us kids would enjoy reading and make it a part of our lives. They determined that the best way to do this was by providing opportunity and example. So they chose Thursday. On Thursdays, the television did not get turned on. Mom and Dad would sit in the family room and read. There were built in bookshelves on either side of the fireplace and they were filled with books. Of the approximately forty lineal feet of shelves, half were taken up with reference books: an encyclopedia, dictionaries, thesaurus, legislative manuals and almanacs. The other half were filled mainly with history and biographies, with maybe three feet of philosophical fiction and two feet of family photo albums. My brother and sisters and I each had our personal collections of books in bookcases in our bedrooms.

On Thursdays, we could pretty much do what we wanted. There was a stereo, pool table and fireplace in the basement recreation room. There were games and books there, too. There was a table for puzzles and crafts in the family room. We could play organ in the living room. But we would find our folks quietly reading. I don’t remember being told that we couldn’t turn on the TV. They were reading in front of it. It just wouldn’t seem polite.

We all grew up to be readers.

Years ago, I heard a story on NPR about Iceland being a super-literate country. Thursday was family reading night. All broadcast television would go dark on Thursday evening. It was practically considered one’s civic duty to write at least one book in your lifetime. I haven’t been able to run down the source of this story or substantiate it. Perhaps the internet and cable have erased this distinction there, by now. I did think it was curious that they also chose Thursday. We know a man whose full name is Samuel Shakir Kamees Massad, which translates from the Arabic as: “asked of God to be thankful for Thursday.” To that I say Yes I am!

He fixed a flat and served mankind.

The first time I helped to change a flat tire was when I was not yet ten years old. The whole family was in the station wagon on a lonely two lane road in the middle of Minnesota, on our way to a lake. A car was stopped on the side of the road with a flat, left, rear tire. The woman driving the car was just starting to try to figure out how to change her flat tire. This was long before the days of GPS and cell phones. My dad pulled over to offer assistance. He then backed the car up so that we were behind the lady’s car, so our headlights could help us see. He proceeded to change the tire, instructing my brother and me on how to properly foot the jack and remove the nuts while the tire still had contact with the ground. My brother, Tom, who was six years older got to help pump the jack and loosen the nuts. I was in charge of stowing the nuts in the hubcap.

After the tire was changed and the jack and damaged tire secured properly in the trunk of the lady’s car, she thanked us and offered my dad payment of ten dollars. This was the early 1960s, so that would translate to be about $75 to $100 in today’s money. My dad thanked her, but told her to keep her money. I was just a little kid, so any paper money was a big deal. I couldn’t imagine turning it down. She insisted that my dad accept it. He firmly told her no thanks, and added, “The way you will pay me back is the next time you see someone in need and you are able to help, you will help them out.” When we got back in the car he repeated the conversation for my sisters to hear. He stressed that everyone is in need sometime, so if you hope to be helped in an emergency, you need to always do what you can when the opportunity presents itself. That was probably the most important life lesson my dad ever taught me.

This was not the only time he taught this lesson. It was repeated by example countless times and by words a few. But this was the time it stuck with me.

(Since then, I learned that stowing the lug nuts in the wheel cover is not always a good plan. If you step on the edge of the wheel cover, it acts like a catapult launching them in unpredictable directions.)

Charlie was the baby of his family, the youngest of four siblings born to Mae Wise Coulter and “Freeman” Joseph Coulter.