Kook or normal?

[DarkPhenyx]

Listening to a different morning show this morning. They were talking about kooky people, how one of the guys on the show was "afraid" of kooks, and how the woman on the show grew up in a kooky house and was more at comfortable with "the eccentric". Then someone mentioned that they were too kooky to fit in well with "normal" people and too "normal" to fit in with the kooky folks.

I think that's me. Always too weird or just not weird enough. How about ya'll? What are some of the things you grew up with in your house that you thought must be normal and everyone did it, only to find out, probably when relating the story among friends, that your family was composed of complete freaks?

[Loonman]

1. Normal

Somebody has to define normal, first.

My family is fairly average, but our neighbors were white trash idiots.

[Skittles]

2. I have always been the outsider

the American child in England, always the new kid in school (GI brat), a sergeant in the Air Force, and now I work in the corporate world although I never went to college (oddly enough, I am the one called on to edit my coworkers' stuff for spelling/grammar mistakes). I am definitely more comfortable with eccentric people than others (seeing them AS people is a basic start) but I think you misuse the word "normal" I see so-called "normal" people as those who buy easily into the accepted standards of what is CONSIDERED "normal". It certainly doesn't mean they are happy, by any means.

[DarkPhenyx]

3. Oh, I was using the term properly.

Or at elast in the context of how I meant to use it. I know a great many "normal" people who are quite unhappy. I think many of them would be much happier if they would embrace their inner kook and fly the flag high.

I also think some kooks would be happier if they flew a bit more "under the radar".

[geniph]

4. I'm weird as snake shoes

and I'm VERY uncomfortable with conformists.

It'd be a shorter list if I listed the ways my family was normal, rather than trying to list the ways we were (are) freaks.