Introduction

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It was not too long ago that most people were normal. They tilled the fields or worked hard in factories, they ate regular food that was hot and plentiful and served on thick crockery, they went to sleep shortly after it got dark, they prayed (all the time, not just when they were in trouble), and they engaged in sex under the covers with the lights out.

Other tings in life were normal, too. Buildings had windows that opened and closed and features such as cornices that were pleasing to the eye. Paintings were of people or pleasant landscapes or boats or bowls of fruit, and patrons bought these paintings at reasonable prices and hung them in their homes and felt happy and at ease living with them. Children were given names such as Joe or Ed or Ann rather than obscure, crossword puzzle names from the Bible or multisyllabic names that once would have been reserved for the family dinghy or a pet turtle. There were exceptions to all of this, of course, but for most part normalcy prevailed and the people were glad just to be alive.

Back then, people thought of this:
-Respect for Authority
-Sunday Excursions
-Fear of God
-Hope
-Flapjacks
-Self-sacrifice
-Sticktoitivness
-Favorite Fishing Hole
-Lines of Poetry Learned by Heart

Today, on the other hand, almost no one is normal. If you ask people today whether or not they are "content with their lot" (a key phrase from the lost Age of Normalcy), they will assume that you are talking about real estate and tell you they are not. Unbidden, they will then go on and tell you that they have taken up a terrific new physical activity (and describe it in great detail, an injury to prove it), that they just bought a new car but wish they'd gotten a different color, that they wished they were single again (if married) or married (if not), that their privet hedge is proving to be much too much of a responsibility, that they are bored at work, overweight but dieting, and tempted to enter into a dangerous love affair. They would like to move, maybe far away. They are restless. They are dying to travel. There are no good men around anymore, no decent women, no leaders, no juicy tomatoes.

This is the neurotic's heyday. We wish to be fulfilled but we don't quite know how to go about it so we become overstimulated and confused instead. We are lucky enough to have great personal freedom just now, but rather than making us truly free it drives us to concentrate more and more on ourselves until we reach a state of self-absorption that was once the special province of kings and cardinals. Like them, we begin to take ourselves seriously in a world that clearly is absured. This causes difficulties that sometimes are dreadful but much more often are minor and peculiar.

A typical modern neurotic, for instance, thinks of this:
-Christmas 1959
-Location of Dry-Cleaning ticket
-Batting average of the 1946 Phillies; The width of the Dardenelles; Woodrow Wilson's middle name; lurid details concerning John Dillinger; etc.
-Sixth Sense
-Recurring Daydream
-Indecision
-Fear of dressing inappropiately
-Hindsight
-Hatred of childhood nickname
-Guilt
-Monotonous tune
-Self-pity

For some time it has been said that you have to be neurotic just to get along in the modern world. This is not true, of course, but it has the ring of truth and it is comforting to those of us who frantically change our clothes three times before leaving for a party or who are secretly addicted to grape-flavored lip balm or who believe that losing a finger is preferable to missing the beginning of a movie.

The Neurotic's Guide doesn't assume that everyone has to be neurotic, but it believes that they are, anyway. This wiki is meant to be both a guide and a comfort. It will tell you what to do when you are caught in certain neurotic circumstances, and it should reassure you that what you do in certain other circumstances is not so very odd after all. There is sex here (or what passes for sex), there is hot weather and cold, there is a list of famous neurotics and a few slams against the French. The wonders of baking soda are discussed, as are Ace bandages, palm readings, blind dates and the fear that someday you'll cross your eyes and they'll stay crossed.

The Neurotic's Guide deals with the real world. It is concerned with the countless petty problems and anxieties that race through your head from the moment you wake up in the morning to the time you go to sleep at night. The main idea here is that we're all in this thing together; we all have trouble getting through the day from time to time. This wiki will help. If you just read it, for example, there's two or three hours killed right there.

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