Some men have a tendency to call women “crazy.” They toss it around like a Frisbee on Labor Day. But the worst part is, they’re sometimes under the severe delusion that it’s actually true.

See, the thing is, very few people are actually crazy, by the formal definition. According to psychiatric stats, only around 4% of the population actually has some diagnosable mental disorder. “Yeah” some men are saying, “the other 96% aren’t in my dating pool.” Well, given that there are 155 million women in the U.S., if you do the math (and you know I’m serious about this shit if I’m doing math) it means your chances of actually meeting a certifiable nutcase is like 1 in 100,000. Or something.

Arguably, every human being is his/her unique brand of crazy — but that pretty much robs the adjective of all its meaning. So when a man calls a woman “crazy,” usually there’s something else operating. Like this:

What he says: Christ, she’s all pissed off about nothing again. All I did was disappear for a couple days and not return a few calls, and she goes totally nuts. That chick is crazy.

What he means: Rather than deal with the fact that I behaved like a 6-year-old on PCP, avoided all responsibility for a situation I’d created, failed to consider someone else’s feelings, literally pretended that what happened never happened, and thus caused this reaction, I’m gonna go with “she clearly has a mental disorder.” Since that’s the only way someone could think my behavior was less than perfect.

There are a few other variations as well:

What he says: She’s crazy.
What he means: She “inexplicably” yelled at me for leaving the half-full milk carton on the counter overnight. And the ice cream. And the leftover brisket.

or:

What he says: She’s crazy.
What he means: She didn’t think my story about exhuming a sunflower from my nose was the funniest thing since Richard Pryor’s “pigs are pigs” routine.

And my personal favorite (also the most ubiquitous):

What he says: She’s crazy.
What he means: She won’t sleep with me.

Of course, there’s a big juicy paradox in the middle of all this (I call it the Gender Catch-22): The surest sign that you’re crazy is you think everyone of the opposite sex is crazy, while never questioning your own sanity. So chew on that.