People Are Weird

“Normal is an Illusion.  What’s normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.” Morticia Addams     


Bill Tune

bctune@gmail.com


I’m just a normal guy; everyone else, I’m not so sure. There are people who look different, people who think different, and people who act differently than I do. That can’t be normal, can it? I like MY normal.  Everyone else is just weird. Or are they?


We live in a world with many different concepts of what is normal, but maybe that’s a good thing.  It would be a boring existence if we were all too much alike.


A recent cartoon showing four young boys in sleeping bags was captioned: The first sleepover: Where you find out your family is weird.  One boy is putting on his sleeping headgear and saying, “Wait.  You guys don’t wear nightcaps?”  Most of us have had similar experiences where we discovered not everyone is exactly like us.


Of course, there are obvious cultural differences of which we are vaguely aware, but even people whom we think are like us, can be surprisingly different. In college, my brother and I shared an apartment with two other guys.  I am genetically predisposed to avoid food preparation (that’s my story…) but my brother is a good cook.  One day he prepared tuna salad sandwiches, which were delicious – just like Mom used to make. However, the roommates were curiously quiet until one of them asked, “What’s the crunchy sweet stuff in this?” Brother and I shared a bewildered look, and then I asked, “Doesn’t everyone’s Mom put apples in tuna salad??” Our “normal” was different than theirs.


Difference in lifestyles was never more evident than when I got married. Beverly moved into my house, which became our house. I soon discovered that I had been keeping medicine in the wrong room, my standards for cleanliness needed upgrading, and don’t even get me started on the toilet seat issue. I have learned over the decades that the art of compromise is essential to a healthy relationship. I’ve also learned that compromise means listening carefully to both sides before doing it her way. The important thing to remember is that I’m still the one who “wears the pants in the family” – at least, that’s what Bev says. That’s normal, isn’t it?


As an educator for 32 years, I had to learn to respect the different environments in which my students were raised. The years I spent working in small schools gave me experiences with all age groups. Kindergarteners were especially interesting because a large part of their education was learning the difference between “normal” at home and “normal” at school. At my first job, in addition to my teaching duties, I drove a school bus. One morning just as we were approaching the train tracks one block from school, the lights began to flash, and we had to stop and wait for a train. As the bus slowed to a stop, everyone heaved a sigh of disappointment except for one little boy who unashamedly said, “Shit!” Guess what was normal language in his home? As a sensitive educator I had to be careful to correct the inappropriate language without railing at him about using “evil, filthy language,” because I would be inadvertently sending the message that the people in his home were bad people. “Normal” can be very confusing.


About this same time a kindergarten teacher gave me a classic example of how cultural biases can affect standardized testing. Even back in the 70’s kids took annual achievement tests. The kindergarten teacher administered her test orally, and students chose answers by selecting the correct picture. One of the questions asked, “Where is the best place to display your schoolwork?” The pictures from which they were asked to choose included things like a bulletin board, the wall, a window, a door. Unfortunately, this teacher taught in a room that had no bulletin boards, so she routinely posted the kids’ work on the walls. Guess what the kids chose for their answers? Sorry, kids, the correct answer was bulletin board! These kids had a different normal than the creators of the test.


Even as hip as I’ve always been (not), language has sometimes been problematic in communicating with students. When I became a math teacher, I was working at a school in a neighboring town.  One day another teacher and I had our classes in the computer lab and one of her students, a black girl, asked me, “Mr. Tune, where do you stay?” I had no idea what she was asking until my teacher friend clued me in. “She wants to know where you live.”


It sometimes boggles the mind how different “normal” can be for people from different cultures. Each of us is a product of the environment in which we are raised. In the mid-90’s we hosted a foreign exchange student from Bulgaria. This was truly an education. We did some advance research on the Bulgarian culture and learned that their head-nods for “yes” and “no” were opposite ours. “Yeah, right,” I thought. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”  That didn’t take long. I brought Tania home from the airport to meet her temporary family, and Beverly greeted her with a hug and said, “I bet you’re glad to be off that airplane!” Tania gushed, “Oh, yes!!” while shaking her head back and forth. I silently screamed, “Oh my God, it’s true!!” My big concern from that time on was picturing her on a date with a local boy.  I feared she might have trouble conveying the sentiment “no,” if necessary. Use your words, Tania!


People with a different “normal” do not have to come from different cultures.  It can happen to different generations, even in the same family. Our son Thomas was an only child, so his upbringing differed significantly from mine, one of four siblings. Thomas was a sophomore when Tania lived with us, and for the first time in his life, he had to share his sanctuary with another person, a girl even! [Sanctuary = bathroom] Once when he was complaining about this, I shared that at his age I lived in a one-bathroom house with my parents and two teenage siblings. (Older Sis was already grown and gone.) Thomas looked at me incredulously and asked, “How??”


Speaking of growing up poor, my Dad pastored small Methodist churches in West Texas. We never went hungry, but to say the least, money was an issue. This was problematic considering that Dad loved to eat out. (Mom was not always well and often did not feel like cooking.) My siblings and I were raised knowing that whenever we ate out, we could have anything we wanted - as long as it was a hamburger. Of course, this dietary limitation did not apply to the parents. Hamburgers were cheap and an economical way to feed four kids. I can still remember the extravagance of eating my first fifty-cent burger. I was in college before I realized that people under 18 were allowed to order chicken fried steaks!


These are trivial examples, but we live in a world torn by civil wars and conflicts largely due to a lack of tolerance for people who violate someone’s sense of “normal.” Personally, I think variations in economic standing create greater differences than race in this country, but we also have difficulty with people of different religions, cultures, and languages. Even within seemingly homogenous groupings, we argue over different politics and theologies. We seem to have reached a point where people can no longer agree to disagree. The “other” must be demonized and civil debate is a thing of the past.


The original Star Trek series had stories that taught valuable lessons amid the crude special effects and over-acting. In the episode “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” the Enterprise encounters a planet that has been nearly destroyed by its own inhabitants.  The last two survivors are still fighting. Both men are half-white, half-black, but on opposite sides.  Each hates the other because of this “obvious” difference. I hope we can learn to tolerate the differences of our fellow man before we end up so consumed by hate that everybody loses. I know this is not easy, maybe not even natural, but if we could make tolerance the new normal, wouldn’t we all be better off?


Before I end this, I’d like to add a PS to my last essay, “Kids Say the Darndest Things.”  I left out one of my favorite stories:  A friend of mine was working on a project while being assisted by a young scout.  She needed some tape, but he had none.  She teased him, “No tape? Why not? You’re a scout! You’re supposed to always be prepared!”  He innocently replied, “No ma’am.  I’m just a Cub Scout.  All I have to do is do my best.”


Maybe we all need a little more of the Cub Scout Motto attitude.  That’s not too weird, is it?

enough

 
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