I know... I know...

“You're kind of a weirdo. Did you know that?” This is Brian, my boyfriend's, catchphrase endearment towards me and my actions. At least, I think it's an endearment. He says it an awful lot. Even when I think I am doing something completely normal like singing selected show tunes from the movie adaption of the musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas while I do the dishes. Mundane, right? But, yes, I suppose to answer Brian's question, I know I am a weirdo.

There's no other way to live, really. At least not for me. Normalcy is a little drab for my taste. Why eat boring, old paste when there's delicious Play Doh to be had? Bad analogy. Can't seem to think of a better one though...

I remember sitting on the bathroom counter in my parents' house when I was a tweenager. I'd sit in there for hours as one brother or another banged on the locked door and complained that there were other people in this family. Set aside the fact that I wasn't supposed to sit on the counter or lock the door. From the time I was eleven to the time I was roughly fifteen, sitting on the bathroom counter, locked in the loo, was my sanctuary. I'd preen, make funny faces at myself in the mirror, pick at my newly-developed acne (only making it worse, but somehow that didn't occur to me)... However, mostly, I contemplated things. I'd daydream. I'd figure out important conscious elements of my personality.

No joke, I remember asking myself in the mirror during one of these self-therapy sessions if I would rather be perfect like Jesus or normal like Jenny from Mrs. Busch's English class. I thought about it for a long time. I decided that while I should aspire to be as good of a person as possible, being perfect like Jesus probably wasn't really a very attainable goal, not to mention a dangerous dabbling in the blasphemous. Then I preened a little before I came upon the conclusion that, yes, Jenny from English was pretty normal. Normal right down to her fashionable Adidas flip flops and form-fitting melon-colored tee shirt that matched the color of her ponytail Scrunchi. But Jenny with all of her glorious normalcy was also average. So average that if it weren't for my crush having a crush on Jenny instead of on me, I probably wouldn't remember anything about her. Well, maybe I'd remember the Scrunchi that perfectly matched her melon-colored tee shirt... But that's probably the most atypical thing about her.

(On a separate note, should I still be bitter about unrequited, ten-year-old puppy love when I know my crush turned out to be a doped-up career dog toy salesman with a foul odor about him and an intentionally-uggo punk rock haircut? Perhaps not... I will always have a soft spot in my heart for him, albeit now only friendship. He and I went different directions when we got older, but I think we'll always have the mutual adoration because we had one another's backs in the killing field known as the seventh grade.)

I decided that average wasn't the way to go. Average equated in my mind with concepts like being invisible. Mild-mannered. Demur. While I do strive to be kind and polite, I didn't want to be those other things. I wanted to be Pat Benetar and Weird Al and Gilda Radner—and oddly enough (to my father's horror) Rosanne Barr and Fran Drescher. These people contributed to society with wackiness. More so (in my seventh grade opinion) than boring, old historical figures or scientists or politicians. Curing diseases and hashing out civil rights. Puh. Eccentrics were lovable to me. Even today as an official grown-up, I admire them. And although weirdos are weirdos because they generally have a difficult time following suit, I truly think people with these off-the-wall characteristics is why I felt comfortable becoming who I truly am on the inside: kind of a weirdo.