What is normal anyway?

Think you’re normal and everyone else is crazy? Think again. 

This one goes out to all my weirdy friends, you know who you are.

Here’s yesterday’s Sunday Times Column, full and uncut (they had to shave a little off it in print, due to space issues).

Have a great week weirdo. 

WEIRDOS – By Paige Nick

The world is full of weirdos.

Like the guy in Florida who spends his spare time making intricate insect dioramas, dressing up dead grasshoppers and creating western scenes with them, or scenes with dead cockroaches wearing miniature tuxedos in outer space.

Or how about the lady who knits sweaters using dog and cat’s hair? Closely followed by the people who actually wear sweaters made out of their pet’s hair? Do we really love our best friends so much that we want to wear them? That’s just weird.

And what about the smart weirdos? Like the scientist from the University of California, who’s in the process of inventing a way you can power your cell phone with your own sweat? It takes a special kind of weirdness to think up something like that.

The online world is full of these kinds of eccentricities. Take the American taxidermist who stuffs foxes carrying pet ducks under their arms, and stuffed weasels wearing tutus, for which there’s no shortage of weirdo buyers. Mr crazy taxidermist struggles to keep up with demand.

 

And across town, 60-year old Bob Gibbins and his wife Lizzie (55), have amassed a collection of over two hundred and forty sex dolls, which they like dressing up and taking with them on shopping trips. It’s not cheap being this kind of weirdo, Bob and Lizzie have spent over $160 000 on dolls so far, and show no sign of slowing down.

Although you don’t have to be rich to be a weirdo; Graham Barker is a 45-year old librarian from Australia who’s been collecting his own belly button fluff for the last 26 years. He harvests it(?), gathers it daily, logs it, and stores it in jars. As you do.

Also, somewhere in Singapore is a 33-year old man who has collected more than six thousand Barbie dolls. He keeps them displayed all over his home. Imagine going back to his place after date number three and finding that?

For decades whenever the neighbours of mass murderers are interviewed after the fact, they all report, with surprised looks on their faces, that they always seemed so normal.

But what is normal anyway? The oxford dictionary defines it as: ‘Conforming to a standard; usual, typical or expected.’ By that reckoning, there can’t be any such thing, can there? If you ask me, the standard, usual, typical or expected around the world right now is completely bat-shit crazy.

We order Big Macs and fries together with a diet coke. We smoke light cigarettes (what? So that we only get the light cancer?) We circle the parking lot four times to find an empty parking bay closest to the gym. And have you ever read a comments section anywhere on the Internet? Also, someone was once the first person who thought to try a peanut butter and banana sandwich. I rest my case.

So let’s not point fingers at other people here. You sir, and you madam are more than likely nowhere near normal. Normal family? What’s that? Who doesn’t have a weird aunt Zelda, or a dysfunctional Uncle Georgina? And what do you collect, or what’s that thing you do that you’d rather nobody knew about? Yes, exactly, that’s not normal.

I have a constant running commentary with a very good friend, where we accuse each other of being the weirder one. She does this thing where she unconsciously raises both arms above her head in her sleep and wakes up like that. And you read this column; you know what I do. I’m telling you, normal doesn’t exist.

Even the most benign, boring and regular among us have been designed with our own unique tic or idiosyncrasy. And thank goodness for that. Imagine how dull the world would be if everyone was just a little bit less abnormal?

That being said, maybe we shouldn’t do away with normal quite so quickly. Nobody wants a gynecologist who’s a flat out freak, and I’d rather my accountant wore grey shoes and was in bed by ten thirty. And just imagine how amazing things would be if our politicians all strove for a little less lunacy. Oh no, wait, now I’m just talking crazy.