Christie over at Girl On Canvas got a kick out of an old post I did on font snobbery, so I’m posting this graphic I made a few days ago detailing our rough existence.
And for the record, yes, there is a difference between Arial and Helvetica. I see it every day. Every single day.
There’s a bumper sticker that simply says, “Why be normal?” I have a confession to make. My blood boils a little bit every time I see that bumper sticker. It’s a rather innocuous thing, I know, but there’s something fundamentally wrong with that.
The people who usually get a smile out of that and put it on their car usually fall into one of two groups:
The vast majority are in that second group.
Let’s take a second and define the word “normal.” I cringe whenever I hear someone say, “Well, nobody’s normal,” or, “Nobody’s family is normal.” Statements like these show how little this word is understood. Let’s look at what the dictionary actually says:
conforming to the standard or the common type; usual; not abnormal; regular; natural
“Conform” is not an attractive word these days, so most people want to avoid it like the plague. But let’s look at the other words in there.
Common – So normalcy is defined by what most people embody. If nobody is normal, then it’s time to revisit that definition, because it makes no sense at all. Yes, everyone is different, but these differences are accounted for in the definition of the word. Even with all of our differences, there are a number of commonalities that tie most of us together. For instance, if something sad happens, it’s normal to feel sad. This is a nice, normal reaction held by most people. Similarly, if something good happens, it’s normal to feel happy. If one is inexplicably sad when something good happens, and there’s no other cause for the sadness, this is not normal. If someone had no emotional reaction whatsoever to a strongly emotional event, this is not normal.
Not Abnormal – “Normal” is a bad word, but, inexplicably, “abnormal” is as well. “Abnormal” clearly implies that something is wrong, something is off. It’s important to remember that these are opposites. If nothing’s wrong, if nothing’s off, you are normal. In this sense, it is definitely not a bad thing.
Natural – In the same vein as the last one, normalcy is very much defined by our nature. The concept of human nature only exists because it is common to the vast majority of humans. And most of us have a pretty good grasp on what human nature includes. So everyone has a pretty good concept of normal, and it’s usually pretty easy to spot when someone deviates from it.
Growing up with severe depression, I was not “normal.” I was different, and not in the way that everyone is different. I was different in a way that only a few people are different. I was different in a way that nobody understood. Most importantly, I was different in a way that was very bad for me. There was nothing enviable about my position.
Admittedly, during this time, I may have even bought that bumper sticker and put it on my car. But that’s not how I felt. I adopted coping mechanisms, much like a kid who does not excel academically begins to despise those who do. But when I was honest with myself, I wanted desperately to be normal. I wanted to be able to feel happiness freely, not at the whims of a shortage or excess of brain chemicals. I wanted to be able to trust that feelings that I had were legitimate and actual. I wanted to have some of the same experiences that others had—not all of the same, of course, but just enough to where I knew there was nothing wrong with me.
When people say things like, “nobody is normal,” it usually goes to show that they have no real concept of abnormality. These people have usually never experienced the alienation, pain, and isolation of true, chronic abnormality. In short, they have no appreciation for what they have.
Additionally, taking words like “weird” and “different” and applying them to everyone takes away any ground for those of us who are truly different to stand on. If everyone is weird, and we’re weirder than them, then what are we? There are other, less innocuous words that we usually settle into, like “disturbed,” “dysfunctional,” or a number of much harsher terms that I’ve heard throughout my life.
I am proud to say that, with some help, I’ve overcome a lot of these shortcomings in my life. I would now describe myself as mostly normal, and I’m very happy to be where I am.
So I apologize to anyone who has said these things (or placed the bumper sticker) innocently. My intent is not to put anybody on a guilt trip for making what was intended to be a light, fun comment. I’m only trying to explain the darker side of this mentality and the subtle or not-so-subtle effect it can have on people. Next time the urge comes up to use this in conversation, think about what you’re saying. It could carry much more meaning than you know.
My first eBook is available for download here. If you read it, please give me your thoughts. It will likely go through some more edits before I put it up for sale on Amazon.
Right now, it’s just the Kindle format. I’ll need to sit down and figure out other formats, which I’ll hopefully do this week.
Writing short stories, it’s easy for me to think that I haven’t made much progress with my fiction. I just did a count today, and I’m sitting at 71 pages since the end of August. I’m going to be going back and adding a page or so to one of the stories in the next week or so, and then starting another. The overall plot is starting to come together, which is good to see.
I’m going to be posting them on my new writing blog here as I finish them. I’m going to be working on polishing the next story, and I think the one after that is ready to go. I’ll probably start the fifth one when we get back from our trip.
I’d love some critique, if anyone feels so inclined, so feel free to let me know if you end up reading anything. Thanks!
There’s a video that’s been making its rounds with a lot of my Facebook friends, and undoubtedly getting a lot of attention in other channels as well. If you haven’t seen it, here it is:
My friend Jason Watson did an excellent analysis of the logic used here, which is definitely worth a read.
I have to say, I can relate with everything the guy in the video says. Yes, some churchgoers are hypocrites who do hurtful things; yes, some churches focus on rules at the expense of the big picture. I understand why he’s saying everything that he’s saying, and I’ve said some of these things myself. But I still don’t agree. In addition to everything that Watson said, here’s why:
Many of you already know this story, but I haven’t documented it here before. You know those inflatable boxing rings? I know them. I know them well. There’s a story there.
My sophomore year of college had just started, so there was the usual reconnecting with old friends and meeting new ones. For some reason (I can’t remember exactly why), they had a bunch of inflatable carnival games on the main lawn one evening, so some friends and I decided to go check them out. They had the usual bouncy castles and bungee runs, but what immediately caught our eyes was the inflatable boxing ring. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s like a bouncy castle where you put on giant, inflatable boxing gloves and punch the crap out of each other. This is the sort of thing college was all about.
My friend Kyle and I immediately decided this was something we had to do. Kyle and I were famous not only for being hippies, but also for an unusually large repertoire of Your Mom jokes. (My favorite: Your mom is so fat she was recently overthrown by a small militia group and is now known as the Republic of Your Mom.) So, of course, the boxing ring inspired both of us to pull out our best Your Mom jokes, and accentuate them with some good, old-fashioned threats as well. By the time we got to the front of the line, there was an awful lot of pride riding on this match.
“Okay, climb in the ring and put your gloves on,” the ref said. (I like to call him a ref, even though he was just a minimum-wage junior carnie.)
Kyle walked around to the far side to climb in the ring. This was my first chance to come through on all of those slanderous statements I had made, so I had to make an entrance—a good one. I grabbed the ropes surrounding the ring, mustered all of my strength and agility, and flipped over the rope and into the ring. BOOM! I’m a little hazy on the details, but apparently, my feet hit the bouncy ground and bounced back while the rest of me kept going, causing my right knee to connect hard with my jaw. (I would later discover I had teeth marks on my knee.)
So Kyle climbs into the ring, and I’m on the floor, bleeding profusely from the mouth and basically being incoherent. (Again, I’m a little hazy on the details here.) I found out the next day upon a doctor visit that I had managed to give myself a concussion whilst climbing into an inflatable boxing ring.
I mentioned I was hazy on the details. Here’s why: I had total amnesia for about fifteen minutes. Apparently, I never actually lost consciousness, but there’s a span of about five minutes that I don’t remember, and a span of about ten minutes that I remember not remembering anything. The first thing I remember is holding a flavorless snow cone to my lip while a guy mopped up blood behind me. I had another classic Brandon reaction. Here’s my thought process upon regaining my senses:
Where am I? Am I eating a snow cone? Why doesn’t this snow cone have any flavor? Wait a second, who am I? What have I lived up to this point? Do I have amnesia? How utterly fascinating!
I found out later that week that I had met a number of people for the first time while I had amnesia. While I certainly made quite the first impression, I had to explain to them later that I didn’t actually remember meeting them.
It wasn’t long before I decided to go back to my room to recover. When you get a concussion, you get really, really, really tired afterwards, so all I wanted to do was go to sleep. That’s when I remembered my Calculus homework. Calculus was the bane of my existence that semester, and it all really started with this. Calculus homework is hard. Calculus homework with a concussion is impossible.
As I mentioned, I went to the doctor the next day because my head was still pounding. That’s when I found out I had a concussion. That’s also when I found out that if you go to sleep right after you get a concussion, you can slip into a coma! So, while I was angry about the Calculus homework, I actually owe it my life, as I would most certainly be a vegetable today had I not completed it.
So the next time you hear a teenager complain that Calculus won’t ever do them any good, you tell them: Calculus saved Brandon’s life!
To this day, I still have a large mass of scar tissue on the inside of my lower lip, which serves as a constant reminder of the hidden dangers of inflatable boxing.
With few exceptions, I mostly only talk about my cooking successes on this blog. Those who know me well know that I’m pretty adventurous in the kitchen. I have no problem making things up and cooking without a recipe. Most of the time, it works out. Tonight, well, it didn’t. So that’s inspired a top five cooking disasters post, following my re-cap on tonight’s dinner.
Tonight, I made breaded chicken with red onions and sun-dried tomatoes. Seems pretty straightforward. That’s where I went wrong. For breading, you can make a light breading just by dipping the chicken into flour. This makes a very light breading—barely noticeable. I took some of the oil from the sun-dried tomatoes and used it to make some of the flour stick. When the chicken came out of the oven, it was coated in what looked like greasy pancake batter. It tasted exactly like the last sentence made it sound. I think Janelle gave up and started eating some tortilla chips left over from lunch.
So, lest you think I’m an awesome cook, I sometimes make things like that.
And now, my top five cooking disasters:
The Stuffed Shells
My sister and I were cooking for a party my dad was throwing. We decided to make stuffed shells, because, really, who doesn’t love stuffed shells? We didn’t have all of the ingredients, but cooking at my dad’s house without all of the ingredients is like basic training for Gregorys. We are Macgyvers in the kitchen. We know no fear. We will look an empty pantry in the eye and tell it where it can shove it.
We got most of the stuffing done before we realized we didn’t have enough ground beef for the dish. No problem. Like I said, we do this all the time. What’s in the fridge? Hot dogs? No problem. Let’s cut those little guys up and drop them in the mix.
The stuffed shells tasted like hot dogs. I don’t mean they tasted like stuffed shells with hot dogs in them. They tasted like hot dogs with the texture of stuffed shells. You could barely taste the tomato sauce. Apparently, the hot dog is one of the most potent flavors on the planet. Who knew?
The guests ate the shells politely and in complete, dead silence.
The Salmon Patties
I decided to make salmon patties while staying with my dad. Salmon patties were something I had a lot growing up, and I absolutely loved them. So I got the canned salmon from the store and prayed that we had suitable ingredients at home to finish the recipe.
Salmon patties aren’t a difficult recipe. Bread crumbs, check. Diced onion, check. Oil, check. Eggs… eggs? Not so lucky there. Well, what’s the worst that could happen?
I wish I could say that the salmon patties caught fire or exploded or catalyzed into coal, but it’s not quite that exciting. Really, they were just disgusting. It turns out eggs are the most important part of that dish. Without eggs, it fell apart and basically dehydrated. I wound up with a sickly, burnt, ground-up salmon jerky without any seasoning. I coaxed my sister into taking a bite. I don’t think she’s ever forgiven me for this. We wound up putting the “salmon patties” in the cat’s feeding dish. The cat took one whiff, turned up her nose, and walked away. We had to toss not only the salmon patties but also the cat food they were sitting on top of.
The King Cake
Even though I already documented this one here, it’s worth another mention. I can’t really say anything that’s funnier than the pictures in that post, so go ahead and look at those.
The Cookies
For those who don’t know, I moved up to Kansas from sunny central Florida in the Spring of 2005. I was originally working for a new church. It all started with a trip up here to meet the people who would be starting the church. At the time, I had just started dating Janelle, so I was staying with her for the week I was up here. She had, of course, heard of my legendary cooking skills, so I decided to put them to work to bake some white chocolate cranberry cookies for her. Just as I started mixing the dough, she got a phone call from her best friend who lives down in Phoenix. She went outside to get better phone reception.
Those who know me know that, in addition to being rather adventurous in the kitchen, I am also exceptionally clumsy and uncoordinated. (This is evidenced by the large volume of salsa I am covered with after eating at any Mexican dining establishment.) As I was putting the cookies in the oven, one of them slipped off of the baking sheet. No problem, just scoop it up, right? Well, her oven had some kind of small vent on the bottom. And, of course, the cookie fell right in there.
Within minutes, black smoke started pouring out of the oven. (You didn’t seriously think I’d turn off the oven and deal with it, did you?) I opened a window in the kitchen, but the slight draft couldn’t keep up with the billows of smoke filling the house. Before long, the fire alarm went off. I tried fanning the smoke away from the fire alarm, but that didn’t work. I wound up removing the fire alarm from the ceiling (which didn’t stop it, as it was battery operated) and carrying it outside for a breather. As Janelle saw me walk outside with a ringing fire alarm and smoke pouring out of the front door, she told her friend, “I’d better look into this, I’m going to have to call you back.”
So the first baked good I served Janelle was smoked white chocolate cranberry cookies.
The Garlic Bread
This one’s kind of unique in that I still don’t know what I did wrong. Janelle was throwing a pitch party (a card game tournament) at the duplex she lived in and I was cooking for the event. I had popped some garlic bread in the oven for our guests. After enough time had gone by, I went to check on it. The garlic bread was on fire. I don’t mean smoldering or burnt around the edges—half the loaf was on fire. I had a classic Brandon reaction: I closed the oven, put my chin on my hand, and thought about it for a few moments (as any great man of action wouldn’t have done) before Janelle’s roommate Liz got the baking soda and put the fire out.
Now, I know it looks bad, with me setting Janelle’s kitchen on fire twice. I’m happy to say our kitchen has been fire-free for five years, now. The grill, not so much. Flaming cheeseburgers are kind of my specialty.
So… Tired…
I thought running at night was supposed to keep you up. Hmm. I can’t tell how I’m doing on my fitness goals, either. I’m losing fat, but gaining muscle, since strength training is a part of it, so I’m actually gaining weight. I hope this is a good thing.
These days, when I’m not working out, playing music, or working, I’m frequently writing. I’m working on several related short stories with the hope of digitally publishing them later in one joint volume—maybe several. I don’t want to post them here yet, but feel free to message me if you want to read them. I’m somewhat ashamed to say that they would be in the same section as Lord of the Rings. I’ve got two stories completed, and I have two in progress. And if you’re wondering, my favorite redhead alter-ego Lenus is a character.
That’s all I’ve got in me tonight. Good night, folks!
Guess who’s not a slacker any more? This guy! I finally finished my portfolio, which you can view here. (Well, it’s almost finished. I need to get the writing samples up there.) I decided to tone it down from my last design, which was a little flashy in retrospect.
Any thoughts?
