Mentality.

Miss L calls the office once in a while, to rant about the (imagined) biochip in her right hand, secretly implanted by a hospital researcher. She rants about how her hair has turned white, and that she bleeds under the skin. She rants that there are others like her. She rants about government conspiracies, the PAP, and George Bush. She rants that we should represent her and expose these conspiracies. It is always the same old story.

Harmless mostly, except when work needs to be done, and nobody really wants to listen to the 20-minute (usually) rant. Otherwise, whoever happens to pick up the call will just 'listen' to her, in OFF mode. Yesterday, I picked up the call.

It was 1800 hours. I was feeling restless. I was mentally drained. I was so sleepy. And I was hungry.

Sometime into her rant, I asked her if she had dinner yet. Because I had not had mine. And I was hungry. Was she hungry? Would she like to tell me what she was planning to have for dinner? Where did she intend to have her dinner? Where does she live? I was hungry. Would she like to know what I intended to have for my dinner?

A pause on the other line. She laughed nervously and was lost for words, for a while. When she called back again - she always does, within five minutes - I tried to talk to her about dinner again. She ended the rant quite sooner than she usually does.

My colleague in the next cubicle was amused. But behind the laughter, there was a flicker of something else in her eyes.

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Mental illness - a medical condition or social definition? I think it is the latter, mostly anyway. It is about doing things differently from the rest of society. The unexpected. The glitch in the programme.

Mental patients are not that scary. It is the ones who work in the cubicle next to you, with the social skills to fit seamlessly into the rest of society - when they want to - who are.