I'm glad I'm not normal
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Somewhere along a rather paradoxical line of thought, I've come to view normal people as being, well, a little odd. I never excelled at 'fitting in', and indeed for the longest time I tried to do anything but. These days, however, my approach has more in common with indifference. And it is from this healthy vantage point—on the edge, but not so far away as to be truly unacceptable—that I am able to observe normality and its many deviances.
As well as being odd, normal people are rather dull. They're largely predictable and share a group mentality, which quickly becomes a frightful bore as they flit from one trend to the next depending on what the media tells them they like. It's rare and refreshing to find an individual that chooses not to conform, but every now and again, evolution skips a beat and individuality becomes the kind of 'unique' often accompanied by medical professionals and restrictive clothing.
For example, I'm not convinced that the woman who sat in front of me on the bus the other morning qualifies as 'normal'. Despite being on her own, she seemed to be having a quite animated conversation with the world at large... and in complete silence. Her mouth was moving, her head was nodding, and her hands and arms didn't stay still for the entire journey, as she gesticulated in a controlled, yet enthusiastic manner. For a moment, I was almost convinced that perhaps she had a big speech to deliver and was rehearsing it in her head (give or take). But then I noticed that she was wearing a fleece with 'Tesco' embroidered on it and, much as I hate to judge, I just can't bring myself to imagine an occasion within such a store for quite so animated a performance.
As if that wasn't enough, that very evening, while waiting in the bus station for my return journey, I had the pleasure of two even stranger souls. One of them, a girl relatively new to her teens, walked past me a couple of times—as if doing lengths of the station—all the while spraying herself with men's deodorant—over her clothes, I should hasten to add. She had a friend with her—who, thankfully, wasn't similarly inclined—and the two went about their conversation as if her actions were completely 'normal'. In comparison, the second odd soul was rather less interesting, but no less deserving of mention in that, while he was patiently waiting for the bus, he was, in fact, clucking like a chicken.
Peculiar as the non-normal types may seem, normality itself is not without its quirks. Several weeks prior to the above, on yet another bus journey, I found myself involuntarily listening to a girl on the phone to her boyfriend demanding to know why he'd added another girl as a friend on Facebook. She was quite upset by it. No doubt there's a back story that explains her behaviour. But it smacked of the sort of paranoia that only normality can bring.
Perhaps it's my particular journey. Since all of these characters—normal or otherwise—seem to play out on my journey to or from work, it could be that the concentration of their sort is strongest along this specific route. But somehow I doubt that. It is with far more than mere suspicion alone that I believe normality to be all around us. And for my own sanity, I'm choosing to keep my distance.