Tag Archives: relationships

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Normal is the New Weird

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Today in my psychology class we watched the movie Stand By Me. I’m kind of a sucker for movies about relationships – father and son relationships, brother relationships, and friendships. So Stand By Me, as a movie about four preteen friends, is kind of right up my alley.

There’s this scene in Stand By Me where cool-kid and group-leader Chris is talking to artsy intelligent-kid and narrator Gordon. Gordon asks Chris if he is weird, and Chris says “definitely” in jest. But Gordon keeps pestering him, and finally Chris says, “Yeah, but so what? Everybody’s weird.”

The delivery of this scene, like every scene in Stand By Me is perfect. And so, even though it seems like a cliche, it comes across as profound.

But I was thinking, even though this idea is kind of cliche, we never really think about its implications. If everybody is weird, then weird is normal. And if weird is normal, then everybody is normal. So it kind of makes just as much sense to say that “everybody’s normal” as it does to say “everybody’s weird.” But no one ever says that everybody’s normal.

I think we make up weird. It’s a narrative that we decide to use to self-gratify or to help our world-view. If we can label other things as weird or our own behavior as weird, it creates a gap between those things and behaviors and the “normal” world.

I knew this girl once who described herself as weird. It was something she talked about a lot. But to me, she was no more weird than the rest of the world, but I found it difficult to relate to her simply because she believed she was weird. I think sometimes we assume that the world is normal and we are weird. But it’s actually that self-talk that isolates us from others. Not our perceived weirdness.

What makes you weird/normal?

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As Relient K Says, We Should Get Jerseys

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When I was in the fifth grade, we had these teen mentors that came from the high school. I think their purpose was to get us all ready for junior high and the halfway high school things we would experience there like kissing and truth-or-dare sleepovers. They railed against peer pressure and taught us about character. I was totally into that sort of thing. I’m still into that sort of thing. I wish I had an adult mentor or something now.

Anyway, we had a boy and a girl. And I remember that our class was obsessed with the fictional idea that they were dating. We used to put questions in the anonymous question box about it. The girl would always answer. She would blush a whole lot and then talk about how great of friends they were, but no, they weren’t dating.

I’ve been thinking about that idea a lot because I am now a leader volunteering with middle school students. And I wonder if they have fictional ideas about my love life.

I think the tendency of kids to think a boy and girl team are dating actually tells us a lot about love in a really simple sort of way. In college, I see a lot of people thinking that love is having a warm body with which to cuddle, or having somebody to whom to complain, or having someone with whom to go on dates.

None of those conceptions really gets to the heart of the matter, though. The married couples I see as successful and the relationships that I admire are the ones that operate like a two-person team. Love is a beautiful, half-choreographed, half-improvised dance duet.

Children understand this. That’s why when they see a boy and a girl working efficiently together, they assume dating status. At some point we forget it, though. We get caught up in doing the same-old Electric Slide and never really think about the beauty of creating something new and original with another person.

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What It Means to Fall in Love a Dozen Times a Day

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Sometimes, I like to tell my friends that I fall in love at least a dozen times a day. I tend to get a lot of weird looks and people yelling at me when I say things like that. I obviously don’t mean that I daily go through the complicated process that might end in marriage or that I think the real falling in love thing requires no social interaction.

What I mean by it, then, is that I develop crushes like nobody’s business. Are you an artist? Then I probably have a crush on you. Are you a musician? Then I probably have a crush on you. Can you speak intelligently and convincingly about something? Then I probably have a crush on you. Are you driven? Then I probably have a crush on you. Are you passionate about something? Then I probably have a crush on you. Do you consistently love people in really big, awesome ways? Well, you get the idea…

Believe me, I understand how silly all of this is.

But, a crush is simply defined as an “usually temporary infatuation.” And this is what my crushes signify. It’s not that I believe I could spend the rest of my life with almost every woman I meet or even that I believe I could successfully navigate a relationship with them, it’s that there are things about almost every woman my age that I find temporarily infatuating.

And then I got to thinking. Right now, these “crushes” are really unproductive. I recognize them as “crushes.” Society tells me that crushes are important. I don’t want relationships with all crushes. I avoid until crush is over. Silly.

I figured out a way to make crushes really productive though: I recognize them as things about people that I really admire and like. I tell the person in question about her quality that I really admire and like and why I admire and like it. I spread good cheer. Awesome.

See, I do that last strategy with my male friends all the time, or I like to think that I do. I tell them that I love them and when they do something awesome, I tell them. But I’m all jittery about doing it with my female friends, mostly because I think when I recognize something cool in them, it means I’m crushing. It’s probably time to graduate junior high.

What types of things make you “crush”?