Are we crazy or are we dancing?

As you walk the streets of New York City you will see and hear a variety of sights and sounds. More often than not you will see people singing, dancing, talking to themselves, and an assortment of other things that seen anywhere else would make a "normal" person think they were watching crazies. I have found in my four years of living here that just because someone belts out Whitney Houston in a Target or dances along to their Ipod while walking down the street does not make them "crazy." It just means they are about to audition for Alvin Ailey's biggest show...in their head.

I know that there a good amount of legitimate dancers, actors, singers living in NYC. I don't think they often practice while walking down the street, but in the end you really just never know. I saw this guy dancing all by himself while walking down my street, my first reaction was...he is batshit crazy, but then I looked at him and he looked like a normal young man. This does not mean that he's not crazy, but upon further inspection I decided that he was probably just rehearsing something or coming up with new dance moves for a special performance of some sort. Why people find the need to do this in public is beyond me, but I am not one to judge (okay I am and I did).

I think dancing is one thing, but when people belt it out when they are walking down the street is something I will never understand. Do they know people can hear them? Do they know they're not in a subway with guitar and no one will give them a quarter? Are they aware that they are a really bad singer? So many questions and so many seemingly crazy people to ask. I saw this perfectly normal young woman walking down the street busting out Leona Lewis...She did not look crazy, but that is crazy lady behavior if you ask me.

When you live in New York you constantly ask yourself if you are going crazy. The stress, the people, the nutjobs surrounding you, it can really make you question your own sanity. However the second I see a man in Target singing Whitney Houston at the top of his lungs as he wanders through the aisles allows me to remember that I have not yet reached that point.