Am I normal? Do I want to be?

Today, I was called crazy and weird. I asked, “What do you mean?” He took a significant pause and stated, “You’re just NOT normal.” The conversation ended but I still kept pondering: What is normal?

I know many a people have considered the word but I was wondering should I be offended, the person didn’t elaborate on the words when they chose to evaluate my personality. Was he unable to put me in a box, put me in a stereotypical group so therefore there must be something wrong with my being.

Definition for normal (nor – mal):

1. conforming to the standard or the common type; usual; not abnormal; regular; natural.
2. Serving to establish a standard.

I guess my definition would look like this:

Taryn (Tear – in): bitchy, hardworking, overbearing, outgoing, dominating, friendly, psycho, neurotic, silly, angelic (once but he was very old) loud, feminist, talkative, deranged, histrionic, animated, drama queen, cynical, sarcastic . . . and I am sure there were more that I can not remember or care not to.

But adding these three words to my definition or character description has left me feeling sort of inclusive about how other people view me. To me, crazy and weird have negative connotations so I am kind of hoping these words were somehow supposed to be a compliment but googling these definitions I am now unsure. Perhaps, the person who called me these things didn’t fully understand the definitions of these words. This is a person that cares about me but used these words to describe me. Look up crazy and weird in a dictionary, I’m not really sure you’d want someone who embodies these qualities into your house for a cup of tea.

I have to admit, I am a human Nancy Drew. What I mean by that is, I am constantly trying to figure people out. I am not searching for missing clocks or can-openers or whatever the shit was she searched for that filled those pages that made those books so popular. I must know questions like this: Are they gay, why do they hate milk, how come they are trying so hard to please people, why are they so insecure, why do they always wear longsleeve shirts in Florida, why is a grown man home at all hours of the day, why does he scratch his butt so much, who waters plants at 3 am, . . . etc. etc. I want to get to the bottom of the people, what makes them tick, why do people do the things that we do? Some issues are small, some consume the person. I like to be able to figure out a person and then be able to draw a sound conclusion and I am at peace. I shouldn’t care and it’s not my business but I guess we can add to my list of descriptors is that I am nosy or maybe better yet, inquisitive. The conclusion that I come to might be completely off base but at least my mind rests and I feel like I have solved something.

I think in another life I would have made a great explorer. I should have been an anthropologist but I was getting sick of sitting through classes where all we did was watch monkeys. It is not that riveting to watch monkeys eat and throw their own shit at each other. Well, at least not to me. I highly doubt we evolved from monkeys and my logic for that, is that, we are here and so are they, so riddle me that. Maybe, the GEICO caveman has the answer. He’s always claiming to be so smart and I have never heard him say a damn thing that impresses me. I think he should stop whining about being classified as stupid and say something amazing and prove the masses wrong.


I started thinking about society and celebrities and other people in the public eye and they are regularly called crazy, weird and abnormal. So should I take these words as a compliment or do these words not have the same meaning to a non-celebrity. I think celebs just create interesting events that most people can’t interpret because it is so different to them. I would love to be able to hang with some of these supposedly crazy celebrities. Why is biting the head off a bat, not okay? Or if people want to flash their vaginas to the masses, so what! Or why can’t we all jump on couches (I did as a kid!) These celebrities seem interesting to me! Or is it weird or not normal that I would want to hang with them?



I will not let these words define me. I think all people are indefinable. How would you feel to be categorized and told by someone they can sum you up in a few words? Isn’t there so much more to people? I like to think so. I am proud to say I am not NORMAL. I am WEIRD!

Want to mess with someone’s head: ask them to describe you and when they use vague, ambiguous words, ask them what they mean by that. I bet they have no idea.

People always say “that’s normal” but we should just remove that word from our vocabulary because I think there are very few things or people that can be considered normal. We are all abnormal freaks in one way or another. So allow me to end this blog (which was very much inspired by wine) by saying: Welcome to the Freak Show!