If not, the interview opened with Mr. King discussing the dilemma of describing in detail how a rat would feel if it jumped into a man's mouth, how the body wriggles, how the paws scratch and the whiskers tickle the soft palate...By this time, I was giggling. Ms. Stahl was making gagging sounds. For the most part, the interviewer spent the entire time making incredulous noises regarding Mr. King's mental health and how did his wife live with him? Perhaps she might have had more validity if the preceding segment of "60 Minutes" had not been involved in describing particular crimes committed during South Africa's recent nightmare of apartheid. Let me ask, how weird is Stephen King compared to the testimony of a man who barbecued another human being while sitting around with a few buds drinking and eating? I call this the Weirdness Scale.

Perhaps it is only that I feel a certain sense of empathy with Mr. King. I've been called weird all my life. The first half of it, I wasn't even trying, so I guess you could call me a natural. But this is the thing about being weird. I would never have supposed I was weird except it seems to be a majority opinion. It is not as if people get to know me and then think I am less weird--au contraire, it is only after making my acquaintance that people clue in to how weird I really am. But if I didn't have people telling me I was weird, I would think i was Little Miss Normal. I don't think I am alone in this belief, either. Say you took all the weird people and put them on an island somewhere (call this hypothetical island Manhattan...). Of course, this means you would have every poet, author, artist, musician, comedian, and shock jock in a concentrated radious. It would be like Mardi Gras every day. But getting back to my point, not one of these people would think she/he/it was unusual or abnormal. Okay, we might have to stick the Trekkies over by Times Square, but no one would be able to tell the difference. Perhaps you can tell I've spent a lot of time trying to puzzle over this weird/ sane dichotomy. I think Ihave finally figured it out. It all has to do with where you put your skeleton.

So, I can hear you saying, people think you're weird--what's usually their first clue? No, work with me here. See, most people masquerading as sane upstanding citizens aren't very different from their wackier neighbor. They're just better at keeping their skeletons in the closet. Every little foible, deviance, vice, spark of individuality, gets locked in that closet until one day the closet is so crammed with skeletons and other little pieces of the person that he just dies and no one notices for two weeks until the stink gets so bad that neighborhood dogs start howling the police investigate everyone e goes to the funeral and no one has anything to say at the eulogy 'cause the poor schmuck never did anything worth talking about. This is my personal nightmare.

Nope, when I go I am going to leave my friends and family something to talk about. Cause I believe in letting my skeletons out. Go ahead, try it. Take the key (why do you think it's called a 'skeleton key' in the first place?), unlock the door, swing it wide open and just tell everyone of those grinning piles of bones to get on out here, we're going to have a dance. Invite your friends over, have a party. You always wondered who your real friends were, now you'll find out. And your best friends--trust me on this--will just turn to you with these grins on their faces and say, "I always knew you had it in you, what took so long?"

say "hi" to Alice