# Always being the weird one **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 24, 2006, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/always-being-the-weird-one/358001 "2006-05-24T03:45:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/always-being-the-weird-one/358001/1 "2006-05-24T03:45:36Z")
I know what it’s like to be the weird one in the family. I’m notorious. My gay cousin is absolutely normal… I used to have a theory that I’m some sort of mutant because I was born in the late 1950s, right after there had been aboveground nuclear bomb tests, and radioactive fallout circled the globe. Anyone else? ---
**Author:** ![E.Thorp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@E.Thorp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E.Thorp)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/always-being-the-weird-one/358001/2 "2006-05-24T04:58:52Z")
Weird as I’ve been (or been called), I think I’m just a normal member of a weird family. My sister – the popular girl, cheerleader, sorority sister, etc. – refers to herself as “the black sheep,” which should tell you something. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/always-being-the-weird-one/358001/3 "2006-05-24T05:21:46Z")
My whole family was weird in one way or another, except for my sister. We referred to her as the ‘white sheep’ of the family. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/always-being-the-weird-one/358001/4 "2006-05-24T05:48:25Z")
I split the “weird one” title with my uncle Rob, who lives in a cabin in Kaministiquia, Ontario. (Well, actually Thunder Bay, but he _used_ to live in Kaministiquia.) Seriously, though, it’s disturbing. My family is nice, kind, functional, and devastatingly heterosexual through and through. We don’t even have a sturdy maiden aunt that everyone wonders about, or an uncle who’s saved every Playbill since 1972: everyone but me is happily married with 2.4 kids (except my brother, who’s working on it.) Wearing nail polish to family functions, running for Parliament, and spending Thanksgiving hooking a rug in the den didn’t do much for my status, either. I’m the only male member of the family with earrings, for crying out sideways. It’s scary. ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/always-being-the-weird-one/358001/5 "2006-05-24T05:50:45Z")
I may have given the mistaken impression I’m somehow ostracized by the family for these things. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’m not the black sheep of the family, just the pink sheep. But still… wow. Unless one of the little cousins turns out to be a punk rocker or an assassin or something, I’m basically carrying the entire weirdness burden of an entire extended family. ---
**Author:** ![FlyingRamenMonster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@FlyingRamenMonster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlyingRamenMonster)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/always-being-the-weird-one/358001/6 "2006-05-24T06:09:48Z")
> [@matt\_mcl](#): > > Wearing nail polish to family functions, running for Parliament, and spending Thanksgiving hooking a rug in the den didn’t do much for my status, either. I’m the only male member of the family with earrings, for crying out sideways. It’s scary. Well, if it makes you feel any better, I know who I’d rather have in _my_ family 🙂 As for me, I’d probably be considered weird if the rest of my family had any idea what I was up to. Right now their sole impression of me seems to be “ZOMG SHE LIVES OVERSEAS.” Damn straight 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/always-being-the-weird-one/358001/7 "2006-05-24T07:35:18Z")
I’ve been told I’m weird. My SIL used to be convinced that I was the peak of weirdness (and I don’t even dye my hair funny colors!). But my family includes: - a professional mountain climber - a guy who makes a living by buying expensive cars abroad for other people (they give him half the money, he travels wherever the car will be cheapest, buys it under his own name, comes back to Spain, sells it to the person who ordered it) - a female cousin who took first comunion in jeans - a poet uncle who’s refused to talk with the rest of his siblings because of some book or other that was at Grandma’s - and the grandparents on the other side take several volumes to explain, - not that their daughter is very normal, - either of their daughters, actually, Mom seems normal to strangers but I know she fakes it and my SIL’s brother’s fiancée has a job that implies almost as much travel as mine _and_ is older than said guy, yet SIL doesn’t find her _so_ weird, thus she’s beginning to think I might not be that strange after all. She lets me hold The Nephew without dressing him up in an antibacterial suit or anything 😛