Retarded. Insane. Whatever.

Retarded. You heard that word a million times in elementary school. That's what you called someone who was acting "weird" or "different" or not like the "cool people" who had their jeans tightrolled snugger than a blood pressure cuff.

When you called someone "retarded," you knew you were in the "cool group." Unless you happened to call a "cool person" "retarded." This would guarantee you being tossed into the boy's room trash can. I know this from experience.

When I was a boy in grade school, I was not "cool." This was because I wore Wrangler jeans and Spaulding high tops. Everyone who has been in grade school in America (or perhaps anywhere else - I don't know) knows I am telling the truth. If you weren't sporting Levi Strauss denims and Nike basketball shoes, you were automatically thrown into an inferior caste. And so I was.

But I was not one of those young pushovers who would just sit back and let the bullies treat me like I was lower than the lint in an earthworm's belly button. I would fight back by saying things to the bullies like "I have more hair on my chest than you" or "Your momma's so fat she has to iron her pants in the driveway" or "You're retarded." And that would result in me being tossed into the trash can like I was a used-up can of Cheez Whiz. Then they added insult upon injury by calling me "retarded" and taking my Bubble Tape.

Then I grew up. This was when workplace and grocery store bullies began to call me something else - something much more dark and sinister - the ultimate insult to a grownup. To be called "retarded" as a grown up is a bit juvenile and we all have a laugh and say, "Ha, ha! That was a good one! That brought me back to New Kids on the Block, Beetlejuice and $1.20 a gallon gas prices." But when someone pulls out the word "insane" toward us grownups...well...that's a different story.

Us grownups don't like being called "insane." The disdain for this word originates from the Dark Ages in Europe, when the Catholic Church would burn anyone who was remotely smart, labeling them "insane" because they would prove "heretical" things such as that apples grow on trees and that llamas spit. Us grownups don't like being burned alive today just as "heretics" didn't back then, so the word "insane" still makes us cringe.

But I never was one to go along with the grain of society (remember, I mocked bullies to their faces and called their "mommas" "fat"), so I don't really give a care if people call me "insane." I stay sane when people call me "insane" by thinking of the names of numerous influential people who were labeled "insane" by their contemporaries: Socrates, Jesus the Christ, Galileo, Copernicus, Joan of Arc, etc. These were all called "insane" by inferiors who happened to be living in their age. And retrospect is the judge that we can use to determine who was really "insane."

Perhaps some of those people were indeed "insane." But what made their names known hundreds or even thousands of years later? They stood up against the high rollers of their time, whether it were the people-burning Catholic Church or bullies with tightrolled jeans. They may have gotten burned alive or thrown in the trash can, but at least antiquity has remembered them because they stood up for what they believed was right, no matter what the consequences.

So I say this: Retarded. Insane. Whatever. I don't give a care what people think. If "insanity" is what society shuns because some big-to-do, larger-than-life nincompoop moron says it's "uncool," then I choose insanity! And give me back my Bubble Tape!