It seems like 95% of the people I know have felt weird at one or more times in their lives, particularly during those adolescent years. My friends’ life stories are rampant with tales of being an outcast, being picked on, being left out. I myself feel like I stopped fitting in at the age of five.
Then I come here and read the boards, and it’s amazing to me how many people identify as geeks and nerds. There are so many stories of people being teased and tortured in high school. So many of us were shunned. Or I’ll pick up a magazine to read something totally fluffy and meaningless, and read about supermodels who were picked on in school because they were so tall and skinny. Rock stars who turned to music to express their adolescent angst. Actors who were considered freaks. And it’s kind of got me wondering.
How many people really feel like they’re normal all their lives? How many people have never felt anything but accepted? It’s possible that this is all just self-selection bias: my friends are outcasts because I’m an outcast; there are a lot of geeks and nerds on the boards because it’s easier for us to socialize online than it is in the real world; famous people seek out attention and love because they never felt accepted in their ordinary lives. But I’m starting to wonder if maybe it isn’t normal to feel weird. Maybe most people feel like outcasts at some point in their lives. Maybe we’re all freaks.
I don’t know, which is why I’m asking for your thoughts. Is it weird to be normal, or am I just reading too much into things?
You’re asking how many people felt completely normal at all times? I have a hard time believing that a single person could feel that. Everybody has felt weird at some point if not frequently.
I disagree. The SDMB is a strongly self-selecting group in this regard. At least 50% of the people I see at the mall or on the train appear to be completely unselfconscious. Frankly, I envy them.
I’ve always believed that there is something that could objectively be considered “normal.” I’m not really sure what it is, though; it’s just something that I am not and could never be. It seems to me that that’s a pretty common assumption, although I could be wrong.
Those who only feel weird should move out of the way for those that truly are weird
But seriously, there are times and situations when everyone feels like the odd man out. Human memory being what it is, those are the times that get remembered. When I think about it I know there were plenty of times I wasn’t picked last for kickball, I got to be a fair player over time, but the ones I remember best are the bad ones.
I’m sure that 99% of the population has felt weird at least once (for twenty minutes in 1960). But I guess what I was going for here, and I should have been more specific, is feeling freakish and alienated for an extended period of time - months, years, or even decades. Everyone has bad moments in their lives. But how many of us have had bad moments that have lasted for significant portions of their lives?
Eh, feeling like a freak, geek, or nerd is normal. Everyone has once in their lives have felt uncool and alienated. The ones who feel normal all the time, man, those are the real freaks.
I think appear to be may be the operative words here. People frequently remark on various positive qualities (calm, unselfconsciousness, speaking ability) in me. Not only do I not see these qualities in myself, but I would characterize myself as not having them if asked.
Everyone’s their own harshest critic, and since you’re exposed to your own foibles, failings, and insecurities at all times, and at a much more personal level than anyone else’s, you’re going to think they’re greater. It’s the whole confirmation bias (noticing events by their impact rather than their frequency, and thus misjudging frequency) idea on the most personal of levels.
I think there really are normal people out there, people who coast through life without any physical, mental, or emotional defects of any kind, who are loved by everyone they meet, who have no problems finding jobs or mates, people for whom the world seems tailor made. They coast through life like it’s a tollbooth and they have one of those electronic EZ passes while we’re fumbling for the change. The whole “everyone feels like a freak sometimes” homily is just wrong, period. Normal people exist, and those people are the reason the rest of us are all so screwed up. It becomes too difficult to live up to Those People, so we develop inferiority complexes and superiority complexes and we basically go all out to either please them or pretend like we don’t know they exist. And the normal people are oblivious to this, because they’re so happy. Wouldn’t you be happy if you were them?
I have no idea what the actual percentage of normal happy people is, but it’s got to be high. At least seventy-five percent.
Somebody needs to go rent “Revenge of the Nerds” and cut to the very last scene when the"head nerd" (what was his name?) gives his heart felt speech to the college alumni…
Not only do I think that most people feel like an outcast or weirdo at least sometimes, but I definitely feel a lot of “normal appearing” people are actually quite weird if you dig deep enough. So many times, as I’ve gotten to know people who seemed well adjusted and seemed to have it all together, I’ve encountered some odd dysfunction/obsession/etc. that wasn’t immediately apparent. I think weirdness is a part of being human. Some are just better at hiding it than others.
I second that, and my shrink thirds that. One of the more useful things I’ve learned is that almost* no one is watching my every move and judging me; they’re too busy worrying about their own problems (which is, by the way, normal).
If I could say that without “almost” I could stop seeing my shrink.
My husband and I were talking about this just the other day. I’ve pretty much come to terms with my angst and weirdness, and believe that everyone, at some level, struggles with acceptance and connections with other people. Everyone, at some point, and I strongly suspect more often than not, feels “weird.” And this includes my apparantly normal as rain yuppie in-laws, once you get enough wine into them that they break down that very strong shell of “normal” they hide behind.
My husband, on the other hand, thinks he’s weird. And I’m weird, but in a good way. And all of our friends are weird. And his family, my family and everyone he knows are weird - but there are “normal people” out there, dammit, he’s sure of it! He’s just never met one.
As there is a Joss Whedon quote for every situation (sort of like the Bible, only without numbering), let me offer this tidbit from Season 3 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The epsiode is “Earshot”, written by Jane Espenson. Buffy has been infected with the power of telepathy - receiving only. She’s at first excited to get a glimpse of everyone’s inner thoughts, then horrified and overwhelmed at all the emotional pain she hears everyone going through. In this scene, she’s found a student in a clocktower with a high-powered rifle, seemingly intent on shooting all the “normal” people who have made him feel weird.
Don’t take this the wrong way, because it’s not meant to be mean spirited, but this reads like something that would be written by someone with very little care or awareness of the feelings of other people. You read as if you have absolutely no empathy at all for other human beings - not deliberately, just out of ignorance. Your words suggest an overpowering self-centredness. I find it astonishing anyone would think this without being almost pathologically blind to anything going on past the tip of their own nose. You seem to be saying “Woe is me; I have all the problems. I am beset on all sides with the burdens of being special. Everyone else is fine.” Bullshit.
This “weird/not weird” thing is a silly and meaningless dichotomy, to start with; it’s the sort of thing that everyone should grow out of before they turn eighteen. It’s really very Grade Ten-shitty poetry-my parents don’t understand me stuff. I mean, what adult divided the worst into the weird and the not weird? Get outta high school, folks.
It’s true that some people might, say, have no problems finding jobs; on the other hand, those people might have a terrible relationship with their Dad that eats away at them and they might wake up in a cold sweat three nights a week hearing him scream at them for some unknown failing. Or that person might have a horrible marriage. Or they might have a sexual interest in teenagers they’ve successfully held back their own life but they look up teen porn every night and are consumed with guilt over it. Or they might have an obsessive compulsive problem and they spend 45 minutes a night locking the front door, and then checking it, and then checking it again, and again, and again, and again. Or they might have a pathological gossip problem that causes them to wear out their welcome every three years at every one of those jobs they find so easily.
That girl you knew in high school who had a date every Saturday night and was captain of the cheerleading squad and had everything handed to her on a silver platter is sitting in her car right now in her driveway, staring off into space; she just spend four more grim hours at the reserve casino blowing another $2000, and she’s indebted her family up to the eyeballs and she knows she has to stop but she just can’t, and she’s too ashamed to tell her husband she needs help.
The supervisor you know at work who’s tall and handsome and self assured and on the management fast track? His kids hate him and he doesn’t know why. It’s eating him up every day; he thinks to himself, almost every hour, that he would give up anything to fix things with his kids, but he just does not know how.
I mean, wake up and open your frickin’ eyes.
