When I was a little boy, I caught I locust. At least now I'm pretty sure that that's what it was. At the the time I thought it was the biggest goddamn grasshopper I've ever seen. It was 5 inches long, and this pale sickly light green that made your stomach turn and your vision wobble. I kept it in a Country-Crock margarine tub, and I told all of my friends about the radioactive mutant grasshopper that flew into my yard. No one believed me, but I remained steadfast. I got all of my friends together and brought them back to my grandmothers shed. I held aloft my margarine tub, glinting in the diffused sunlight streaming through the corrugated green plastic that served as the shed's roof. But I knew as soon as I picked up the tub, I could see where the lid had been pushed up. The monster had escaped. Maybe it never existed in the first place. My friends and I dejectedly stomped off to destroy a hornet's nest to quell our frustration.

That same year, I was walking in the forest near my grandmother's house, and I found something I still can't explain. I walked back farther than I've ever been before, and I came across a chain-link cage. It was 10'x10'x6', I think, although I was much smaller then, and my perception of size was a bit wonkers. Inside the cage, which was padlocked shut, were four Laborador puppies, along with some newspaper. I guess whoever locked those puppies there didn't want them shitting on the forest floor. I went back and saw them every couple of days, petted them through the bars, and just let my imagination run wild. I wondered if I had just stumbled on to one of God's storage units. Maybe those four puppies just didn't have a place in the world, and S/He just filed them there for later use, or just to be forgotten. I came back one day and they were gone, no cage, nothing. Maybe they were never there either.

Stick with me, this is all just masturbatory reminiscing in order to build up to the whole story. This is going somewhere, I promise.

Athlete's foot caused my first psychedelic experience. I was 6 years old, and every morning at 6 am I walked about a mile from my house, to the Daycare that I stayed at until 5:30 when my Mom got off work. I wore high top tennies then, and I got athletes foot from all the walking and tying my shoes too tight. I didn't know what athlete's foot was, really, much less did I think I, a 6 year old kid, would have it, all I knew was my foot itched worse than the nagging sensation that the boogeyman had followed me out of my dream state. Halfway to the daycare, on top of a hill in Seattle, I took off my shoe, and one of the bumps on my foot had broken open. What was inside looked like a cross-section of a nautilus' shell. I fell about 9 million miles into that @!?@ing thing, until it filled my whole world. I felt my mind blow apart as I saw the simple correlation between fractals and life; cells divide, split, stick together, and divide again. That was a pretty heavy moment for a 6 year old. I thought I was crazy.

When I was a 15 year old runaway, I would stay up all night with my friend Benji, and we would flip over all the newspaper machines in town; if you turn them upside-down and shake them around in a circle, they'll spit out all the coin inside, until we had about $16 in change. Enough money for smokes and a 7-11 chili dog before we went back to the abondoned crack house that we were squatting in. One night I was sitting in a bus-stop as Benji went up to the store to buy smokes, he had a fake ID, and this creepy transient guy walked up to me in a dirty wool trenchcoat. That's a pretty sketchy outfit in Central Coast California in August. He handed me a very large book and said "Here, you need this more than I do" and walked off. It was the Book of the Church of the Subgenius. How Ironic that 13 years later I've become friends and comrades with so many reverends of said church (Ask Dr. Hal is playing every Wednesday in October at Cafe du Nord, speaking of which).

Whatever, screw it, we'll get to the real story, I've screwed around enough here. These stories, and the following, are not meant to be pure ego, I told them thinking that some of you have some of the same stories. Just little cracks in the egg. Reality seems so strong, but it's strong like a blue-collar Dad is strong, it's ready to come apart at any moment, for all of us, probably some more than others. Here's the meat of it.

My grandmother had Alzheimer's, except she didn't really have Alzheimer's. The doctors called it "Alcohol-Induced Alzheimer's." She drank so much her mind just came apart, slowly but surely. She wasn't so bad in the beginning, her conversation would just start to loop after about 15 minutes, you'd tell her, she'd laugh, you'd move on. Eventually, my Stepdad and his brothers and sisters moved her out of her house and into "Adult Apartments." They were basically an apartment complex with nursing care and a cafeteria, pretty nice joint for an old folks home. I went to stay with her for the day, Gram and me were pretty close, I was 12 then. She met me in the foyer, we hugged, and headed back to her room. On the way we ran into someone I assumed was one of her new friends. She was a nice old lady, my Gram's age, I think her name was Beth. We were introduced, they talked for a minute, we parted ways. As soon as she was out of earshot, my gram leaned in close and said, "Eric, I don't know about that lady..."

"What do you mean, Gram?"

"Well, the other day, I came back from lunch, and the door to my room was wide open."

"Uh-huh."

"I walk in and there's this Beth woman, she had my china cabinet opened up, and she was holding one of my teacups, just staring at it. I said 'What are you doing in here?' and she said 'This isn't my room?' I sad 'No! Your room is across the hall, get out of here!'"

"Jeez, Gram, that's really wierd..."

We headed back, hung out, we talked a bit. I noticed that her conversation was now looping after about 5 minutes, she told me that same story about four times, but she was fun. At about one, we went to lunch. We went to the cafeteria, got some food and sat down. Beth appeared and asked to sit with us, and my Gram greeted her very amicably, which struck me as a bit weird, but the conversation was nice. I finished up, and my Gram complained about how small the portions were, and asked me if I'd like seconds, which I gladly accepted, the portions were microscopic. As soon as my Gram got up and was out of earshot, Beth leaned in close.

"I don't know about your Grandmother, Eric."

"What do you mean, Beth?"

"Well, the other day, I came back from lunch, and the door to my room was wide open."

"Uh-huh."

"I walk in and there's your Grandmother, she had my china cabinet opened up, and she was holding one of my teacups, just staring at it. I said 'What are you doing in here?' and she said 'This isn't my room?' I sad 'No! Your room is across the hall, get out of here!'"

"Huh, that's weird."

That was my first real look into what insanity can really be. My first realization that it may not just be one brain malfunctioning. To this day, I still have no idea which one of them was crazy.

Sometimes, I wonder if both of them may very well have been completely and utterly sane.