The Mysteries of Cellophane

The thing about being functionally insane is that crazy is rarely on the surface. Usually, insanity is buried deep under many layers of "socially acceptable behavior" and "work place decorum." But like a $1.29 goldfish after three months, crazy eventually rises to the top in one form or another.

It took almost a year of working a temp job before this particular woman's bloated carcass of crazy broke the surface. And I would like to stress that she was completely normal up to that point: normal conversations, normal behavior, and normal appearance. Normal, normal, normal.

"Tina" and I had developed a pretty good friendship over the months. We even got into the habit of trading office gossip. On this day, our conversation wandered onto (believe it or not) 'crazy coworker' stories. Having been with the company for several years, Tina had a wealth of stories. But I didn't hear a single one of them. Her actions spoke louder than her words.

As she talked to me, Tina reached into her desk drawer and removed a packet of vitamins sealed in a cellophane pouch about the size of an index card. She opened the packet and emptied the pills into her hand. Next, while she was yakking on about somebody else being crazy, she proceeded to fold that cellophane wrapper into tiny squares about eight times!

Now that's merely odd. What made it outhouse rat insane is that she then pulled out a rubber band, which she wrapped snugly around the tiny square of plastic. And finally, she tucked her little bundle into a pocket inside of her purse.

By this time, the whole conversation was a wash for me. My mind couldn't hold onto a thing Tina was saying because it was abuzz with questions, such as:

• What's so important about that cellophane?
• What does she do with the cellophane when she gets home?
• Is whatever she does with the cellophane so complicated that she can't take care of it here at work?
• Why the rubber band?
• Does she think the cellophane will make a break for it if she doesn't secure it tightly?
• Is this a hobby for her?
• If so, then what particular qualities does she look for in her collectible cellophane?

I didn't, however, ask Tina any of these questions. I couldn't. It would have meant acknowledging the crazy, which would have resulted in one of two possible outcomes. One, she would become embarrassed by the acknowledgement, and then things would become awkward between us from then on. Or two, she (thinking that her actions were board-certified sane) would invite me into her crazy cellophane imprisonment/hobby, which would make things super awkward between us. Either way: no fun for me.

So I did the only thing I could. I nodded and smiled for the next ten minutes. Then I said something nonsensical, like "I guess these papers aren't going to staple themselves." And then I got the heck away. Thankfully, Tina never did this in front of me again (although based on her near-automatic actions, this was clearly a habit for her). Maybe she wisely added another layer of "socially acceptable behaviors" to hide her crazy from me. Or maybe with that last piece of vitamin wrapper, her cellophane collection was finally complete.