Stress can make us do crazy things. I know because stress can make me do crazy things. Also I have plenty of friends who’ve had moments where they look back and cringe. For example, once upon a time I was having “one of those days” and some guy in a Target bumped into me. He asked whomever he was talking to on the phone to “hold on a sec” then promptly told me that I “wasn’t the only one in the store, young lady, so why don’t you watch where you’re going.” To be fair, it’s possible he reacted this way because he was also having a stressful day…but I didn’t care. I should have taken the high road and ignored him, but my hormone levels told me I just couldn’t let him get away with it.

I paid for my items, loaded them into my car, then marched back into Target and roamed the aisles until I found him. I dragged him out into the middle of the store and loudly berated him for ten minutes until I got an apology, went back to my car, then wondered why it was so important. I felt embarrassed. I felt bad for going out of my way to make someone else feel bad. And on top of that, I knew everyone in Target thought I was nuts.

So sometimes I’ll give someone who’s exhibiting crazy behavior in public a free pass. I’ll assume their boss yelled at them or their Prozac prescription ran out. Perhaps their power will be shut off today if they don’t pay the bill by 5pm. Maybe their cat died. (And yes, if you’re wondering, all these things have happened to me in the past six months. Write what you know, right?) I decided to investigate why it is that everyone I know has those insane moments where they look back and wonder, “Was that me? Or did some monster take over my body and make me act like a lunatic?”

My true inspiration for this search came in a curious and extreme manner, a person who I can only call the craziest-of-the-crazy. She was a stranger (both in the sense that I didn’t know her and that she was strange), and she was showing off her crazy for all of us to see in, well, a Quizno’s. To me, a Quizno’s is a relatively unstressful place. It smells good, there’s the promise of food on the horizon, and I’m a regular so the sandwich guys (or artisans, since they seem to prefer that) are usually pretty nice to me. And for those of you laughing at the concept of a “Quizno’s regular”….no, I am not ashamed.

I was next in line with no one behind me when I heard screaming. I looked around, startled, to see a middle-aged woman sitting at a table directly in the middle of the restaurant. She was screaming her order, because apparently she was next in line but refused to stand accordingly like the rest of us cretins.

What followed was fifteen solid minutes of this woman screaming at top her lungs about her sandwich. I have never seen anything like it. I mean screaming. That deep, throaty screaming that bounces off walls. And she simply exuded rage. I was watching her in fascination when I noticed the other customers had all stopped eating to join me in my rude staring.

She screamed for larger cuts of meat. She screamed for extra mayonnaise. She screamed that the mayonnaise could touch the bread and the meat but not the lettuce or the tomatoes. As the sandwich went through the toaster, the poor sandwich guy started to ask me what I wanted when she began screaming that he better not help me or her sandwich would get burned. She screamed for “orange American cheddar cheese,” and then screamed that the slice wasn’t big enough.

At this last one I felt myself begin to lose self-control.  I was hungry, I had stuff to do, her screaming was making my ears bleed, and there is no product I’ve ever come across that is referred to as “orange American cheddar cheese.” Not in a Quizno’s, not anywhere.  The situation was so absurd I just began to laugh hysterically. When I turned around I saw everyone else doing the same thing. Except the poor sandwich guy, of course.

The Screamer ignored the laughter and kept screaming. Eventually her sandwich was complete and I looked over to see what all the fuss was about. The darn thing wasn’t anymore than three inches long and was smothered in what appeared to be an entire jar of mayonnaise. She screamed for water followed by “Is that my change?”, then stormed out. The Quizno’s was quiet for the first time in what felt like a decade until a fellow customer said, “Did that really just happen?” I finally ordered my sandwich, and a minute later security showed up after getting a call about a noise disturbance.

Who was The Screamer? What was her issue that day? Manifestations of stress are not always this extreme (praises be) so in what other ways does stress affect us? Hormones such as cortisol, adrenaline, norepinephrine, and GH (growth hormone) are all hormones whose levels change violently when we are stressed. Each one affects us in a different way, from our sleeping habits and appetite, to where we store fat and the foods we crave. In the part two of this article, I will investigate ways to identify the influence of these hormones and what we can do to keep them balanced. And I promise, I’m not just going to tell you to get more sleep or drink more water.

I am anti-Screamer, it’s true. The free-range crazy-passes I so generously give these days just don’t cover The Screamer. She was fascinating and horrifying at the same time, mostly because I have suppressed my desire to scream in such a manner many times. Hold tight for the second installation of this investigation, and in the meantime…I’ll try to keep my voice down.

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