Long, uninterrupted periods of time in which your only meaningful human contact is with miniature persons that sometimes seem like bipolar wind-up toys can do weird things to your brain. As a person who tends to operate on a relatively even emotional keel, rarely deviating too far from a comfortable indifference except, perhaps, when sports are on TV, the kind of intensity that small children throw at you every waking second of every day is, well, rather intense.