They're Still as Crazy as They Were in 1980 (When I Was Ten), but Four Decades Later...Maybe Wiser...I'm Wondering, "Have They Become Crazier or is That Just Me?"

I'm not even sure how I want to approach this post. There are a lot of cross-sections, intersections, crossroads, timelines, and culture swirling in my head, but it's what is on my brain.

Add to this, family history.

 In 1980, the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy came out, directed by Jamie Lys, and set in South Africa. I was ten years old, Trevor Noah, perhaps, was not even born (don't think so...he's a young stud), but it has always been a classic and been in the back of my mind...first as a middle school student, then throughout college, and always as a phrase in adult life. The Gods are Crazy...but craziness is culturally and historically established, too.

Granted, I first saw the movie in the late 80s (when I was still feathering my hair) right after eating green spaghetti for the first time at my aunt and uncles on Long Island (note: this was horrifying to our side of the family. It was just pasta and pesto with tomatoes ... but for our upstate NY posse, spaghetti was spaghetti...the kind with hot sausage, RED SAUCE and meatballs). My cousin who lived his senior year in Zimbabwe, had a VHS tape of the movie, and as a two-Crandall family crew, we hunkered around a t.v. in their living room. Summary. We were fed pesto pasta, followed by a screening of The Gods Must Be Crazy.

Both were out beyond normalcy for  our branch of Crandalls. We knew kielbasa, Mac-n-cheese, normal spaghetti, episodes of Days of Our Lives, and Mash. In Long Island, however, they ate pasta the color of grass and viewed movies with African humor that, at the time, we had no context for. "Why is that guy wearing a dishtowel around his junk," I believe my father asked.

Truth is, I actually like pesto-pasta now and was the only one in my family who stayed awake to watch The Gods Must Be Crazy until its end. My Aunt and Uncle saw it before and zonked out rather quickly, and my parents & sisters were plotting a way to leave the house so they could get McDonald's (which are hard to find in eastern Long Island where cheeseburgers cost $45 for the rich and ridiculous. 

I admit. at the time, I had no idea what the movie was about and I definitely had never eaten noodles with Gumby-green (I think my mom snuck my sisters and I PB& Js when no one was looking).In my adult life I grew to see how The Gods Must Be Crazy was a brilliant film, especially for its time, and I think about it often. I also keep pesto in my fridge, sometimes make it fresh from summer gardens, and love it on pasta.

But that's not the point of this post. 

The point is, I was up at 4 a.m yesterday morning because I couldn't sleep. Too much was on my mind. I was also on campus from 6:30 a.m. until 9 p.m. yesterday simply trying to patch things up and get on top of the crazy game. I did go home for a while and walked Karal and fed her..but also had a day of grading graduate work, mailing 248 copies of Power of Words (I actually choked up when four employees in the mail room rolled up their sleeves and helped me seal envelopes and get them postal-ready - are you okay, Crandall? Yes. I'm just thankful to receive help. I'm a little overwhelmed that you are helping me.that..that I have support...

But all of this brought me back. The Gods are Frickn' Crazy. They always will be. My Coca Cola bottle, right now, is higher education as a system in itself. I just don't know what to make of it, and I'm in my 16th year of being a cog in its system. I'm trying to figure out this thing that I've made my career, and how drastically different it is from the world where I grew up and the world I inhabit every day beyond campus (in K-12 schools, with everyday people, with teachers, with students). 

University = the Coca Cola bottle. I'm trying to make make sense of it, and I'm learning that it's not supposed to make sense. And that's the point. It's a cultural artifact with cultural context that is 100% foreign from the way I was raised and came to understand the world. It's something from another world, and I am supposed to make sense of...because I entered it with hope take part in it.

It is what it is

...just like green spaghetti (which is actually quite nice)...

This is all to say, the movie makes sense and d I'm likely to have green pasta this weekend at some point.

But, lord. It is so insane. Looney. Nuts. A total shit show. A circus. Way beyond the cuckoo's nest. Yet, it has so much power. 

Yes, The Gods Must Be Crazy. What else could explain why this is as it is?