The Tyrrany of Normal

I am not normal.

To the vast majority of humanity, that is not significant. From friends, it tends to elicit one of two responses:

1. You shouldn’t say that! You are absolutely normal.
2. Yep! Crazy as a loon and somewhat weirder.

Growing Up

I have great sympathy for my parents who had to raise me. They’ve now gone on to glory, but my mother had amazing patience with my weird ideas. I have an early memory, which based on context has to be from when I was 6 or 7, of myself blowing fuses in the house when I put copper wire into the electrical outlet. I was careful to insulate myself. I understood well enough that this could be dangerous and understood insulation. So I just blew the fuses (and pretty much disintegrated the fine copper wire). I didn’t get shocked.

I explained that I was trying to get heat, and the previously used batteries I had with which to do my experiments did not provide enough power. My dad explained to me about resistance and how a heating element needed adequate resistance. Copper was generally not a good heating element. Who knew?

By the time I was nine I had turned my closet into a lab to develop film. I recall my mother patiently explaining to some very concerned people that I really did know how to handle the poisonous chemicals involved, and really could produce actual negatives and even prints. All black & white, to my disappointment.

Explaining things was one of my mother’s hobbies, I think. When I lived in Guyana, South America, people who visited from the US would admonish her that she should make me do more normal things and keep up with schoolwork, provided my correspondence from our denominational school. I shouldn’t just be allowed to do anything I want. She simply told them that when she let me do what I wanted, I read the encyclopedia.

Abnormal Only in a Smart Way?

You can see these things as positive, and many of my friends do. I do too. But you should also note that I had few friends my own age. I experienced none of the normal rites of passage, such as proms, high school schedules, and other social events. Most of my friends were older than I was.

The word “normal” was trotted out frequently. My friends now know me as someone who completed an MA degree concentrating in biblical and cognate languages. At the time my mother had these discussions I was in my teens, nearly ready to leave home, and had less than a semester’s worth of high school credit.

Living with a GED

I eventually fixed that by taking a GED test. I cannot count the number of looks of astonishment people give me on learning that I’m a high school dropout. These days, people don’t call me that. “Well,” they say, “you got over that and buckled down and got your degree.”

But on my first job (managing a health food store) I was a high school dropout. A lot of people were worried about that. I had relatives complaining. I should be heading to finish high school. I was 17 years old with less than a semester of high school! Scandalous! And here I was taking the position as manager (and, for the record, sole full-time employee) of a small business. This was no good for a career.

I continued to make choices that astonished people and made them question my sanity. If I was going to study religion, I must surely want to be a minister. I should pursue ordination. No. I wanted to be a teacher. I was assured this wasn’t going to happen. All the religion teachers were pastors who had worked in the field before taking a job.

I ignored them all. Some of them don’t think I ever had a successful life. I have certainly not had a career that one would normally consider successful. I’m past retirement age and I still struggle. I still don’t do things the way others think I should.

Living with My Own Choices

Despite my own complaints about myself, which I call “the hazards of being me,” I really wouldn’t have it any other way. I could have given in to any number of other options that would make me more successful to “normal” eyes. Sorry. Despite being potentially more comfortable, these paths are just not attractive enough to me.

This Is About Everybody

Now I tell you all this, not to justify my own choices. They are mine and I’m used to ignoring opinions about them. I’m talking about almost every person in the world.

We think our children need to accomplish a set of prescribed things and do them in a prescribed way. If they are sufficiently dissimilar to this “normal” path, we worry about them and we try to bend them to be normal. We want good children, who conform to the general expectations of such good people.

As they grow up, we want them to have “good” careers, ones that bring respect. When I was growing up it was minister, doctor (for the guys), nurse (for the girls), or teacher, preferably as a missionary at least to some extent.

{As a side note, I learned later in life that I inherited some of my approaches to life from my father, who rejected a number of prestigious offers as a partner in a medical practice and resisted titles such as “medical director” even though they were thrown at him. At one time my parents had applied to be foster parents in Georgia. Approval came through but then no children, despite the fact that the county was badly short of foster homes. About a year later, suddenly a social worker showed up with the first child. What was the problem? We were told that the previous social worker had thought my father must be some kind of quack because he was too quiet and humble to be a “real” doctor!}

We often privilege academic careers that require academic degrees over trades. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard someone say of my GED, “That’s OK! You went on and got a master’s degree afterward!” What if I’d decided to keep managing the health food store? It was in considerably better financial state when I left than when I took it over. Would that have erased the blot of not having completed a prescribed course of high school?

In many cases I expect not.

Does Success Give Value?

I like to tell the story of my nephew who is on the spectrum and was not expected to make it past seventh grade because he “couldn’t do the math.” He has a PhD in math education and teaches in a university. That’s nice. I am incredibly proud of him and of his parents, particularly my sister, who didn’t expect the limitations others assumed.

Yet there are others with various differences of personality or who are on the spectrum and don’t have that sort of accomplishment. As much as I am proud of my nephew and his accomplishments, those accomplishments do not give him his value. He, and others I know who are different in various ways, are valuable as whatever they are.

I didn’t write this just about those who have some diagnosis that can be assigned. I am concerned with those who want to take a slightly different path. I knew a very intelligent man who was incredibly talented with computers in the early days. His parents thought it was more appropriate to become an attorney. It didn’t work. He eventually worked in the field in which he was so talented, but he wasted years pursuing “normal” and “respectable.”

Some are going to comment that I was very smart, at least as a child. Often they’re the same ones who question the intelligence of my life choices thereafter. But this is not about making opportunities for the gifted. Well, yes it is. We should. It’s deeply stupid for a society not to provide special opportunities for those who can take them and go far.

But I hate the very idea of “smart” and “stupid” as applied to people. I am not smart. I have particular gifts. Other people have other gifts. That’s good. You don’t want me repairing your car or installing your house wiring. I’m good with the theory of the electricity in the wires, but not so good with the wires themselves.

I believe everyone is gifted in some way. I have yet to meet someone who I do not regard as gifted. As a Christian I add that there are spiritual gifts and spiritual callings. Everybody has something.

Don’t Block the Doors

The guardians of “normal” in our society are responsible for many, many people living frustrating lives and feeling stupid or incompetent, not because they lack gifts, but because these guardians live to close doors to people who just want to be who they are and find a way to work in something they enjoy. They want respectable, which means normal.

We need to learn to open doors to whatever works best, and facilitate the paths of people who get where they’re going by unconventional means.