[Not] weird

I love the word ‘weird’. [Especially since I’ve just (re)learned to spell it correctly.]

And.

I feel privileged that my friends tag me.

Because it shows how they’d like my [evidently indispensable] opinion on several things apart from and in addition to those that I already eruct in these parts. Honestly. I feel like Grace Kelly being tippity tappity tap-dance-tagged by Fred Astaires up on stage. Like a real star.

But.

Getting down to actually completing a tag task, increasingly I find is beyond my capacity to…

To what?

Self-indulge?

Let’s face it. Most tags are tailored like goodwill group-therapy exercises. They force you to think of things-about-yourself that haven’t already occurred to you a million times since you started your blog. [Or else you’d have written about it already, right?] They make you delve into those inconsequential parts of your personality that didn’t even engage your own interest. [Or else you’d have blogged about it already, right?]

This tag is from my dear [and slightly-annoyed-with-me-now] friend HB. He wants me to spill on nine reasons why I’m weird.

Weird?

But I’m not weird.

I’m normal. As normal as normal gets. The average-est person that could exist. Falling directly and squarely at the centre of all means. Statistically speaking of course. [I’m not mean like that. Just averagely mean – like anybody else I pinch helpless babies, make grown men cry, swerve my car within inches past old people on roads, torture little animals, get arsey about completing tag tasks and instead of just shutting the hell up and letting my 'tagee' friends believe I'm lazy, I write nasty posts about the tag etc… basically nothing out of the ordinary that comes even remotely close to the extreme recesses of ‘weird’].

When I first heard of this tag, I thought gleefully. Ah. Fun. This should be interesting. But then as I thought about it more and more, it dawned on me – isn’t trying to define one’s weirdness a form of extreme self-adulation?

As in: Oh look! I’m so weird. And that makes me different. Which means I’m so special!

It’s that particular, irritating italicised kind of highlight – like exclamation marks in excess, or that thing people do with a smirk while speaking with their fingers to say ‘quote unquote’. [I just did it].

So, here’s something to ponder over:

1.) We’re all struggling really really hard to fit in.

2.) We’re all depressive at time.

3.) We’re all twisted.

4.) We’ve all felt (at least at one point in our lives) that we were adopted or/ and the only secret alien life-form-designed-in-emulation-of-humans left behind on Earth by the Tralfamadorians.

5.) We’ve all got moments that are devastatingly sad.

6.) We’ve all laughed at seriously non-funny non-jokes (for days sometimes).

7.) We’ve all got quirks, talents and non-talents.

8.) We’re all clueless about why we’re here and why we wake up every morning.

9.) And ALL of us do stupid things so we can tell ourselves each morning just how our life is so much more seriously purposeful than the next person’s, while we believe just the opposite.

And that’s just plain old bloody boring-as-it-gets normal.

There. I said it. Nine reasons why I’m [not] weird.