GUESS COLUMN: "Classroom craziness"

It has recently occurred to me that I am certifiably insane. Now don't start worrying, especially those of you in charge of my student aid, that I go home every night and stay up 'til the wee hours of the morning sharpening my teaspoons. Nor do I froth at the mouth while watching my carefully archived collection of old episodes of The Smurfs. I'm talking about a different brand of insanity altogether. It seems I'm plagued by flashes of relatively harmless lunacy that come into my head on an almost hourly basis. Let me give a few examples. Almost every time I get into my car, this odd little fantasy plays out in my head. I envision myself turning the key, dropping by the MAC machine and withdrawing the entirety of my dwindling loan refund, and driving westward until I hit the far coast. Then I suppose I could embark upon a Kerouac-esque adventure, hitching and hopping boxcars all the way up into Alaska somewhere. I'm sure if I shaved my head the hired goons from the loan collection department would never track me down, and thus I'd be freed of my financial burdens forever. By the time my whereabouts became known, I'd have already lost all my fingers working in the fisheries, so they could never prove through fingerprints that I was in fact the same man who once borrowed $18,000 in low-interest loans. Then I start the car, and go to Thriftway to do my shopping, as usual. But my insanity doesn't stop there. It gets much more intense. I must say, there's something about a classroom atmosphere that is particularly conducive to these sorts of mad ramblings. Perhaps it's the clinical atmosphere, the structured lectures or the way the professors drone on and on, pretending to know what they're talking about. As the lectures stretch on, hour after hour, I find myself wondering what would happen if, when called upon, I opened my mouth to answer -- and a bird flew out. I wonder how my interactions with the professor might be different if on the first day of class, when we went around the room politely introducing ourselves and telling little summaries of our dreams and aspirations, I had stood up and yelled "My name is Bubba Smith and I'm here to kick Yankee butt!" I could have punctuated this clever repartee by promptly chugging an entire bottle of Southern Comfort and then throwing it through the window. If that had been the case, would the professor then feel compelled to solicit input from me? Should I try it next semester in one or all of my classes? And what if the professor were to simply burst into flames in midsentence? Could something as dramatic as that pull my attention back into the room, out of the depths of my reverie? I doubt it. I haven't exactly been asking around, but I don't think my situation is all that unique. I can't remember who said it, but I've heard sanity defined as "successfully hiding your insanity from those around you." I wholeheartedly believe that's true. Most people walk around this campus like overfilled water balloons, knowingly or unknowingly waiting for that pinprick, that little something that breaks the skin of social conformity. Either this contact gives them a private outlet, a slow, quiet leak that releases the craziness in a controlled manner, or else it results in a sudden explosion. The former is what I call "making friends." Unfortunately, the latter usually lands one in the nuthatch. I do think much of what we really call "insanity" could be circumvented if, on a regular basis, people were permitted to act like total maniacs (preferably without harming themselves or anyone around them). I'm sure you're thinking, "Wait a minute! That's what Friday night is all about!" But I would disagree there, too. I'm afraid going out and dancing, drinking, dating or whatever you choose to do to let off steam is far from insanity. We're constantly bombarded with suggestions that these are the most appropriate forms of behavior when trying to relieve pressure. No, I'm suggesting that people need a special day to do all the things they would never publicly admit they've even contemplated. But who would dare declare such a holiday? I would in a heartbeat, although it would probably help if someone who had some sort of power were to do the sanctioning. After all, if you go nuts in public, people aren't going to forget seeing you do so just because you defend yourself with "Well, Nathan said it would be all right." (I must admit, however, that you'd have a special place in my heart forever.) Why are we as a community afraid to say "OK, on this special day you can suddenly stand up in your classroom, flail your arms and scream obscenities, just because it feels so good to offend, disrupt and generally wreak havoc"? We actually do have something similar, the old pagan holdover known as Halloween. Last semester, I took full advantage of it. But to my dismay, when I walked into class in my three-piece white bell-bottomed suit (no natural fibers in the entire garment), with a black turtleneck on and my hair brushed into an afro of spectacular four-foot diameter, no one else had bothered to don a costume. For a minute or two, I thought I had actually gone insane, or at least missed a day somewhere. But in truth, the explanation was much simpler: I was surrounded by a bunch of stiffs. Even on a day sanctioned for harmless temporary insanity, people felt too uptight (or "professional," they might euphemize) to appear in any way out of line in the classroom. This repression is why we need a holiday promoting absolutely unruly, uncalled for and generally incomprehensible behavior. I recommend we appropriate Flag Day for this purpose. It doesn't mean anything to anyone as it is, so we might as well make it a day worth marking on the calendar. Those unfortunate few who really are sane through and through (I say unfortunate because, in my mind, sane equals boring) could lock their doors and stay in; the rest of us could run around campus cross-dressed in sexy underwear, to roll in the grass, to shave our professor's heads and to generally approximate the character of that lady who dances around in a bikini campaigning for drug-induced world peace. I guess I'll just have to wait until Congress picks up on my great idea. Until then, I shall continue to dream of flaming professors.