Dr. Strangemind, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Normality

[font=&quot]Dr. Strangemind or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Normality[/font]
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[font=&quot]It baffles me how so many people can abridge the complexities of an individual into a single word. One person asks what a certain someone is like, and they simply reply, “Oh, Tom? Tom is the nicest guy.”[/font][font=&quot] [/font][font=&quot] to an obligatory reply of “Oh, fascinating, I’ll have to meet him!” But why, really, when all that’s been told about Tom is that he’s nice and male? For the most part, adjectives are inert and vague, and yet using one or two generally seems to satisfy most amateur psychoanalyses. “He’s wonderful!”, or “He’s a jerk”, or, “She’s crazy!” With as much elaboration as God has put into designing wonderfully crazy jerks, he must be offended. [/font]

[font=&quot] The most derisory of these ambiguous terms is easily the word “weird.” Sometimes replaced by odd, bizarre, different, strange, and peculiar, nothing is more offensive to the hypothetical Tom than for someone to say “Oh, Tom? He’s weird.” Let’s pretend for a second that anyone cares enough to ask, “How so?,” leaving the hypothetical describer to now explain how Tom believes that reptiles control the earth, enjoys dressing in women’s clothing and will soon be named Emily. Maybe it’s revealed that Tom is a pardoned serial killer who ritualistically nails cow entrails to his ceiling, or maybe he just listens to strange, operatic jazz-fusion bands from France. Either one is fairly weird, but I think my friend Cory and a cow’s equivalent to Ed Gein are at least somewhat distinguishable from each other. Really, of all types of people, the most enigmatic and interesting are the weird ones, and ironically we seem more subject to unfair cataloging than anyone else. [/font]

[font=&quot] My sympathy goes out to the poor, strange, multi-persona Tom, for on many occasions I’ve been dubbed “weird.” I recall first falling victim to such subjection in eighth grade. The math teacher had been absent from the room for about fifteen minutes, and in that time the class of preteens had been discussing a variety of life’s most trying issues, ranging somewhere from Britney Spears to Captain Underpants comic books. A student sitting next to me-we’ll call him Billy-had become a nice acquaintance of mine. For the last ten minutes, I’d been explaining to him the brilliance of Pink Floyd and the symbolism of their masterwork, “The Wall.” He didn’t seem to care too much. [/font]

[font=&quot]“You’re weird.” he said. His tone was dead and purely observant, not critical but certainly absent of any sort of reverence. I gazed back at him in a similar way, my mouth drooping open much like his. “Why?” I asked him. [/font]

[font=&quot]“Nobody says things like that.”[/font]

[font=&quot]“Like what?”[/font]

[font=&quot]“Whatever you said. Symbalick, and something about walls and being lonely or something. Nobody talks about things like that. You’re weird.”[/font]

[font=&quot]I was confused and more offended than I’d been thus far in my short life. He hadn’t paid any attention to what I’d said, just how strange it was that I’d said it. Needless to say, I punched Billy directly in the mouth. [/font]

[font=&quot]Well, no, I didn’t. Actually, I stopped talking to him and never even noticed him again. He seemed to have disappeared, as if my strangeness had discomforted him straight into nothingness. Before ceasing to exist, though, he managed to have quite the affect on me, for I had yet to hear anything so shallow in my life. From then on the word “weird” was a compliment, because it separated me from his narrow worldview, and I was forever liberated, if not slightly detached, from everyone else who strived to be normal. However, I still remain a bit troubled by the laughable attempts the normies make at understanding us weirdoes.[/font]

[font=&quot] The adjective “weird” is a valid one. I am weird. But I’m a lot more, too. I’m a writer, a bassist and a self-proclaimed artist, and a mystic who hates religion. I love philosophy, poetry and comedy, dystopic novels and off-color jokes, and perhaps even recanting Reptilian conspiracies over the chaos of my favorite French fusion/opera group while sewing homemade dresses from cow intestines. I might as well, anyways. To anyone who looks at me, says “He’s weird” and immediately quits thinking, there really isn’t a difference.[/font]

 

I've scanned/read all three of the stories/essays you posted, and I think it's pretty obvious that you have a good vocabulary, and a good sense of structure. All of them flow naturally towards their conclusions, and present their ideas in an organized way, always referencing the common theme or idea linking all of the episodes. The 'climaxes' arrive right when they ought to, so it's not a struggle to get through any of them.

On the other hand, reading these is like somehow reading the work of a 21 year old with the experience of a teenager. Some of the similes are just too personal or odd to really work-- 'as bored as a child staring into an hourglass' from the other story comes to mind. There are plenty of situations where children get bored yet for some reason you reach for some weird image that doesn't really make me think of boredom at all. This happens more than once. In the above essay, there is a kind of bland humor in the
imagined scenarios, but more often than not they don't shock me as much as they seem to be intended to.

And while I can appreciate your situation of being isolated amongst a bunch of high school idiots, it's a subject that's been done so much (particularly on this forum) that almost every attempt to write about it leads one to produce nothing but cliches.

Honestly, it's a bit redundant to write about being isolated or 'weird'-- I would be far more interested if you wrote about how you handled that isolation, or how you confronted it, or even how you used it to gain inspiration.

 

Yes, that's my biggest problem. Teenage experiences, as emotional as they are for me, are boring and trivial and come out sounding like angsty whining.

And, it is a school assignment on a Definition essay, so all I'm really allowed to do is define the word "weird" in a certain context. Rough draft, though.

Thanks much for the criticism, it helps a lot.

 

I dont have any critisism... But...

...thats my favourite part

Although Im called weird all the time. Its a compliment, if i wasnt weird i wouldnt be nearly as interesting.

 

Revised.

I'd appreciate another read from anyone who cares, i believe it improved quite a bit.

 

***

 

if you're really 16 you are weird. but in a good way. keep the faith, and keep writing.

 

Well, its not as if this is an inspired piece of innovation or anything. The prompt was to write a definition essay on a single word, in two double spaced pages.

Really, what I'd like criticism on is the effectiveness of the writing or the techniques as opposed to the juveineille subject matter, as I don't really consider this creative writing, just practice in rhetoric. Perhaps on how I could more effectively write about the topic instead of how I shouldn't write about it at all.

 

I stand corrected. Sometimes I feel anti-social and project onto innocent authors. Actually, you sound like a brighter than average teenager who will probably go on to some creative acts. I am deleting my post (too late, of course).

 

No use in deleting your post, just remain corrected and move on.

The conviction that teenagers aren't worth anything might be mostly true, but like all generalizations it refuses the exceptions to receive any of their due respect. Keep your eye open for other groups of people you might think nothing of, some might emerge quite different than you'd think. They're called individuals.

What exactly brought you to your second realization?

 

You might not believe this, but I was once a teenager. That's not the problem -- the problem is that I tend to send posts which disregard others' feelings. I'm working on it.

 

I was just wondering what made you change your mind about me.

 

When I was a kid I wrote a story set in a future in which the entire human race had become reptilian in appearance and nature. It centered around a family of monitor lizards, and I've forgotten most of what happened.

Anyway, I'm on the same page friend. It's not an easy or comfortable path to walk sometimes, but I feel that it's either this or being completely lost. When I think about it, I know there's no other way for me but my own.

I'll take aloneness over the plastic misery so many others seem to live in any day.

 

www.truthism.org That's where I got it from.

All life is suffering. A divine truth of the buddha.

 

Well then, it's time to get into masochism.

 

Do you have a pet fox?

 

That's me!