on the internet:
alex m: [describing me] i think it's closer to the heisenberg uncertainty principle
alex m: make an observation
alex m: and what you're looking at changes
on the streets:
-- why are you wearing all black?
- why not?
-- what, are you going to a funeral or something?
- because we just came from a goth club
-- but look at her! [pointing at me] why isn't she wearing all black?
me- [sarcastically] because I'm unique
-- no, because you're normal
- haha! you're normal! [pointing at me] hahahahahahaha
on the other hand:
sabby: I'm irony!
My high school yearbook has "weird is cool, normal is boring" etched on it in gold. I was voted most unique. I had purple hair and silver stockings and big black boots (one with yellow laces, one with pink) and knee high socks with flowers on them. I played an instrument that looks like a bedpost. Will I look back now to that bastion of glory?
My senior superlative picture.
Fifteen. Sixteen. Those were the days when I'd run around the hallways screaming, "I am calm, I am normal, I am calm, I am normal" with increasing frenzy. I loved that the louder I'd assert this, the more violently I was denouncing my very (oh-so-impassioned) words. Those were the days when I thought there were some parts of my identity can never, will never be taken from me.
Me, sophomore year of high school.
On a cold October evening 6 years later, it took one passerby in a funny hat to tell me I'm wrong.
I was weird, originally, when I didn't try to be. I was just the new kid who didn't know how to dress. I suspect, that if I fall into the mainstream somehow after all, it won't be because I try to be. I was uncomfortable with being the strange one at first. Then I decided it simply didn't matter what other people thought so long as I was happy with myself and how I looked. The moral of the story is that this concept still holds! Now doesn't that seem too obvious?
In high school, I would have shrieked at the man (I am calm, I am normal!) until he was freaked out enough to think otherwise. Then I hear, "Haha! You're normal!" flung at me like it's dirty, filthy, horrible and I surprise myself by wanting to laugh. I know I'm an odd duck and no one can take that away from me. It's even more amusing if you can't rely on your superficial judgements. The point not that I'm "weird" or "normal" or a yellow polka-dotted sheep, but that I like myself. Now, really, this seems entirely way too obvious. The problem is people still care about such trivial things.
So dear reader, what do you have to prove?