Get Weird

Antonyms for normal:

abnormal, exceptional, extraordinary, odd, out-of-the-way, strange, unusual, weird

 

When I was in high school all I wanted was to be normal.  When my mom asked me if I would jump off a cliff if someone else did I would have said and meant,

“Sure, if they were wearing the right shoes and were popular enough.”

I tried to grow my hair out, wear the right clothes, say the right things and generally fit in as well as I could; but I never quite got it right because “right” for me was something else.  Once I accepted that fact, everything fell sort of awkwardly and awesomely into place.

Webster’s defines normal as conforming to a type, standard, or regular pattern and according to that definition, normal is this:

Normal is eight year olds shaving their legs and wearing padded bras.

Normal is ten year olds playing rated teen games in which killing is sport.

Normal is challenging your child’s teacher at every turn but accepting every word your kid’s coach says because you respect one more than the other.

Normal is kids with credit cards, regularly getting pedicures and highlights and being on a first name basis with the barista at Starbucks.

Normal is talking on your phone instead of to the person right in front of you.

Normal is people carrying guns and feeling like they need to when they shop at Target.

Normal is suing for the lightest infraction just for a paycheck you don’t have to work for.

Normal is bullying children, women, and people of another ethnicity or sexual orientation.

Normal is school shootings.

School shootings.

F**K normal.

Normal is highly overrated.

Let’s not do normal for another day, another hour, another minute.

Start today in your life, in your hour, with your kids and your husband and your neighbors.

Be different.

If you don’t think it starts at home or in your place of employment or the community you move around in, you are wrong.

It starts with the things you value in your life and where you put your money, time, and energy.

Be different, get weird.

My family and I would love the company.