This evening, one careless, clueless, oblivious, inattentive (choose one)
pilot made a shambles of the pattern at my home field for 10 minutes.

It was 20 minutes before dusk and the flock was returning home - there were
aircraft in the pattern and at least 3 inbound. A guy (in a Cessna)
announced a midfield crossover entry into the pattern for a touch and go,
but indicated that he'd have to extend his downwind because he was 500'
above pattern altitude. Fair enough, I thought - the guy is gonna fly a
normal downwind + 1/2 mile.

Long story short, the guy flew a normal downwind plus 2.5 miles, and his
downwind was literally a mile wide to boot...

So the airplane behind him (another Cessna) had to fly the same B-52
pattern, the Grumman behind *him* had to fly a B-47 pattern, and I followed
with a B-29 pattern. Two inbound aircraft recognized that the traffic
pattern was a mess and opted to do loiter outside the pattern to let things
correct themselves.

Then the original Cessna flying doofus flew an abbreviated upwind and
crosswind after his touch and go and cut off the folks who had loitered
waiting for everything to sort itself out. Aargh! I don't think I'll ever
understand this type of pilot...

The question in my mind was... Did the Cessna flying doofus even realize
that A) he was flying a dumb and dangerous pattern, being outside of gliding
range from the field, or that B) he caused a bad chain reaction in the
pattern.??

As I said: It only takes one.