Why I Love Weird

Are you guys familiar with that show Adventure Time? It's on Cartoon Network.  The other day while I was driving, PG mentioned from the back seat that there is a boy in her class who bugs her, and so she quoted Adventure Time and told him he was "whack with poo-brain".   Now I know that as a parent I shouldn't encourage my child to insult other children..... but the truth is that when she told me what she said, I got totally jealous.  I've been dying to use that quote on someone.  Also, this kid sounded like he really deserved it.  So good for her.

Anyway, this show is about these two best buds- a human named Finn and a talking dog named Jake-who roam a post-apocalyptic land and have adventures.  There's all these crazy characters that they run into all the time: a tiny robot named B-MO who sounds like a submissive Asian woman, an evil Ice King who's more lonely than evil, a Princess made from bubblegum, and (my favorite) the Lumpy Space Princess who looks like a cloud, sounds like a man, and acts like a hysterical teenager.

This show is right up my alley with it's weirdness.  I absolutely love it.  However, as much as I love it and could quote from it all day long, I never recommend it to my friends.  One reason is that it's not really a cartoon for young kids.  It's humor is aimed more at the middle-school crowd.  However, the second reason I don't talk about it with my friends is because it's so off-beat. Experience has taught me that some people really don't like off-beat things because they're weird.  For a lot of people, weird means bad.  It means scary.  Sometimes, people even think it means evil.  People are afraid of weird.  And that's what I want to talk to you about today.  I want to tell you why I love weird so much.

At our house, we encourage weirdness.  I bristle when people judge something as being weird, and I push hard back against it.  I'll take it personally, even when it's not personal.  You could say that I am weird's own little personal advocate, and I'll stand here with my freak flag and stand up for it every single day for the rest of my life.  I'm passionate about it, and I think with good reason.  Here it is:

One of the things I heard a lot growing up is be yourself.  You are unique. Celebrate your uniqueness.  There's only one you, and you are special! If my mom or dad weren't saying it, then Mr. Rogers or Sesame Street were.  I believed them.  We all believed things adults told us. I went to school, and I went through my day, and I would be me: weird, day-dreamy, spacey me, who, instead of walking place from place to place, would spin like a ballerina;  who was always slow with her wits, but who would write stories for her friends starring them and their crushes.  I was shy and I was awkward, but sometimes, without even trying to be funny, I could make people laugh.

That's what I was like.
But then the message started to get a little confusing. While I was still hearing that I should be me, what I was noticing was that all the kids who were fitting in and making connections and being "successful" were all kind of acting the same way.   I noticed that people seemed to like them more than they liked me because they were wearing the right clothes.  Or they were laughing at the same jokes.  Or they were all talking the same way.  Or dancing the same way.  Or listening to the same music, and so on and so forth into infiniti.  So then I started looking at the adults for confirmation that what they told me initially was true- that I was special; except now I noticed that even the adults really seemed to like these kids too.  These kids were (at least on the outside) pretty and smart and confident and athletic.  Being quiet and dorky and weird didn't get me much affirmation from the adult world while I was growing up.

When I was in high school, there were countless times when my friends would look at me, shake their heads, and say "You are so weird."  And I'd either laugh or I'd apologize, but in my head I'd think "I'm not really weird.  I'm just not good enough at being normal.  I need to try harder."  So I'd try harder.  And do you know that trying to be "normal" took me off my own path more than it helped me?  Trying to be "normal" instead of being myself caused me numerous moments of shame, confusion, stupidity, and physical harm.  I thought that being weird was stopping me from knowing my true self and I wasted so. much. time. thinking that "normal" was the open road to happiness, when in fact, it was nothing but a roadblock.

Whatever.  That's the process of growing up.  We all went through that, to some degree or another.  My kids will go through it and your kids will go through it, and it'll be rough to watch at times.  But that's part of what makes me so passionate about this: we all grow up and realize that there is no normal. So many people waste time trying to emulate an illusion in lieu of being themselves because they're afraid of not fitting in.  (And who can blame them?  Being different in this world is not for the weak of heart).  

When people say that they don't like something because it's weird, what I really hear is that they are afraid.  They're afraid of not connecting or being isolated.  And while I know that it's normal for my kids to worry about fitting in, I never want them to be afraid of weird when it means "different" because from there, it's not such a long leap to ignorant, and we all know that ignorance circles back to fear.My experience with people who lead fear-filled lives is that they tend to label people and ideas-too dangerous, too weird, too scary- in an attempt to control. Their fear allows them only a shallow and stagnant piece of the human experience. Not how I want to live, not how I want my kids to live.

So that's why I seek out weirdness- weird art, weird movies, weird books, weird people.  I don't always like it all, but I want to give it a chance when others have labelled it.  I want to let it breathe and reveal itself. I'll sit with it for a while even though sometimes it's uncomfortable or awkward.  I don't let myself be afraid of it, because when I think of the insecure weird little girl that I was, I was nothing to be afraid of.  I was awesome, and it makes me sad that I didn't know it for a long time.  

I guess you could say that I was a little whack with poo-brain.