A slam dunk, really.

Hire an accountant to do a complicated calculation that needs to be clearly explained to the vulnerable person on the other end of the complication.   The guy compiles three completely different sets of numbers, using incorrect percentages, a useless and confusing chart and an inaccurate letter, addressed to a name he himself has invented, explaining nothing.  $675.  Send an email explaining the problems, asking him to get back to you when tax season’s over.  

Two weeks later: another bill for $675.  Write and mail a letter patiently and concisely explaining the insufficient work and the impossibility of paying the number this fellow has pulled out of his ass.  Wait a month.  A third copy of the same bill arrives.  

“I told you he’s senile,” reassures Sekhnet.

Bills keep arriving for the useless visit to the distracted physician’s assistant.  These bills have been approved by the insurance company pursuant to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, often called Obamacare.  That twenty minutes sitting as the PA asked no relevant questions and cluelessly searched google for a symptom she’d never heard of:  $507, patient’s responsibility.  

“Go talk to the ombudsman, that bill is ridiculous, even if it’s legal,” says Sekhnet.

Your childhood friend, in the role of peacemaker, winds up raging at you.  Now you have to make an appointment to patiently discuss whatever the fuck that was about.

These are, of course, trifles and not arguments for going mad at all.  They are mere annoyances, payable by cash, check or credit card, even for someone on a fixed income.  They may be symptoms, signs of a demanding world grown aggressive, but not, even with ten of their close cousins, arguments for the Laughing Academy.  

The Laughing Academy I’m thinking of, by the way, is not the Ivy League kind where even Freshman can find sexual relief from the staff.   The madness I’m thinking of has no real upside, except the end of trying to make sense of the senseless order of business we are constantly attending to.  And, of course, it’s crazy not to consider the downside of going mad, isn’t it?

You complain that nobody listens to anybody.  It’s like being trapped in that famous one-frame cartoon where the response is “I’m sorry… I wasn’t listening.  Were you saying something?”   Nobody listens to anybody, as a rule.  Just life in our energetic, go-go-go, do ‘im, Sarge, society.  We are too busy achieving, striving, we all have troubles,  here’s a quarter, go call somebody who might actually give three rat’s ass hairs.

You know the deal.  So you take all your time, skill and money, invest in a nonprofit you dream up dedicated to carefully listening to doomed kids, letting them demonstrate their wild creativity.   You’ve never run a business, it’s true, but this one is so needed in the world, so intuitively reasonable, so simple, and it works, can help so many little wretches — how can it not get up and run itself?  

You may not want to know it, brother, but you are more than halfway to the public wing of the Laughing Academy, a smelly subway car you can use as your living room, until the cops eventually take you in for smelling too bad.

I still take a shower everyday, and shave five or so times a week, but the case for madness, never weak to begin with, is becoming stronger by the day.   I can feel it dribbling a basketball on my skull sometimes, angling for a circus shot.  I imagine it, at the buzzer, soaring over the distracted seven-footers between it and the basket, and while they check their smart phones, slamming the rock through the net as time runs out.   

“Game time!” it whoops, harmonizing maniacally with the sound of the buzzer.