I was standing in my Room of Mediation, washing my hair, when I had an epiphany. I was the weird kid. (Some of you are saying, she's only getting this just now?) I was thinking about my own kids and the particular sturm und drang of my eldest daughter. She is ALL DRAMA all the time, where as my youngest is mostly easy going. Volunteering in their classes you see the panoply of kids that inhabit the classrooms. I am happy to say that my kids are not on the edges of the behavioral bell curve. Parenting Success! Level up!
Some kids though are just weird. There is the smart weird: these kids are off in their own worlds and finish their work through snatches of focus. There is weird weird: the kid who thinks nothing of trying to fit 5 pencil top erasers up his nose, just to see if it can be done.
I am pretty sure I was smart weird, but not 100% sure. I tried fitting a whole sleeve of saltines in my mouth once just to see if I could whistle with a mouthful. I regularly poured glue all over my hands to make them look wrinkled like old ladies' hands. I didn't play Dungeons and Dragons, I played the knock off Christian version, DragonRaid, and I liked it. I contemplated learning the base clarinet because I thought it might be my ticket to "coolness". Who thinks like that?
In 9th grade we had those "career guidance" tests? Amid the cops, physical therapists and engineers, mine said "philosopher". That should have pegged the weird meter. Now that I am an adult and my weirdness is charmingly quirky. It's part sf nerd, part book nerd, part self deprecation but I have got to think that at some point a teacher or helper looked at me and thought, "Man, that is one weird kid."
We ALL thought it honey, we were just trying to be nice.
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