The Way I See It

By:Curtis Morton
The way I see it, I really do not want to lose my mental faculties or ‘go crazy,’ as we say locally.
However, I have learnt that there is not much difference between those of us who THINK that we are sane and those, who we THINK are CRAZY.
One writer noted that those of us who are considered sane are really at the ‘edge of the cliff’ and it only takes one incident like for example, a failed relationship; loss of a job etc, to topple us over the edge, into the world of the CRAZY.
Now that is a scary thought.
The other thing that I have learnt is that the people who we term as CRAZY are in turn, thinking to themselves that ‘those people (us), acting weird eh!’
Well I newa!
In recent times, I have had my run-ins with some of our well know characters on the island.
Just on Wednesday, the tall guy from Low Street, gave me some ‘expletives-deletives.’ All, I did wrong, was what I am accustomed to do. I just raised my hand towards him in saluttaion as we passed each other.
Normally, he would raise his hand in return and one day he even came across to ‘dabs me up’ as we punched fists.
That day, he was obviously in a bad mood, or maybe off medication, because the expletives came out with some venom.
There is another one from Briown Hill, who already told me that he is going to ‘damage me’ and he said that he knows what his cell number is…and he was not referring to his cell phone!
Another one from Brown Hill, sometimes call out to me: ‘Mr. Morton!’
However, one day as I was passing him in my bus, he deliberately attempted to throw the mango skin from the mango he was eating into my bus! Fortunately, his throw was not accurate.
“JAM DEM’ mostly tells me that I have been video recording him for twenty-five years. Every year, it’s still twenty-five years! It all stemmed from a day, many years ago when I pulled out my video cam and recorded him as he stated quite clearly: ‘Ah going down town to play crazy now!’
‘NORFIE’ is also no problem. There are days when I give him a ‘little change’ whether he requests it or not and most days, he responds to my greetings by saying: ‘Have a good day sir.’ I have also discovered that the guy has a wonderful singing voice.
Another one from Brown Pasture, was once in a habit of referring to me as ‘Mr.Moore,’ but shortly after I told him that I did not have any money, on a partticular day, he told me quite candidly not to call him ever again—and with the expletives to go with it.
Stupid me, though, can’t keep my hand down when I am passing people and he did catch me again and told me off in no uncertain terms.
I hope that I do not get to that stage in life and I pray God that I can do all that is possible, to help persons like that.
That’s the way I see it. How do you see it?