One of the things I spend an embarrassing amount of time thinking about is whether weird people know they’re weird. Not bad weird. Not dangerous weird. Just the kind of weird that makes you stop for a second and think, “Well, that’s certainly a choice.” Like wearing a tail and cat hears. Come on now... that's weird.
The other day I saw a guy walking down the street wearing an outfit that looked like he got dressed during a power outage. Nothing matched. The hat made no sense unless he was someone's little buddy on a stranded island during Pride month. His walk had a little extra drag to it. And yet he looked completely confident. Like he owned the sidewalk.
It got me wondering. Does he know why people are looking at him? Or does he think he’s perfectly normal and the rest of us are the odd ones? Then I made the mistake of thinking about it too long. What if weird people don’t know they’re weird? More importantly, what if I’m weird and don’t know it?
I mean, nobody has ever staged an intervention with me. I’ve managed to keep friends, jobs, relationships, and a reasonably good reputation. But maybe every weird person says the exact same thing. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that everybody has their thing. Some people wear strange hats. Some people collect things nobody understands. Some people talk to their dogs like they’re coworkers. We all have our quirks. My husband is always asking me, "Who are you talking to?" And I say with the utmost confidence, "Myself!"
Maybe normal is just a group of weird people agreeing not to point fingers at each other. So I’ve decided to let people be weird. As long as they’re happy, not hurting anybody, and not asking me to wear that hat, I think we’re all going to be just fine.
Although the fact that I’ve spent this much time wondering whether weird people know they’re weird probably isn’t helping my case.
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