h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I still don´t get it.

~jwf~ >Our individuality is a myth sustained by earphones.<

QotD for me.

As for being different - my moniker says it all

Oh, I get it!

a-no-mally

I think it's more like An-OM-aly.

~jwf~

Yes.

But it took me years to realise it. I was labelled as special at school, and so strove to be what I perceived as normal and ordinary, because I didn't want to be special and 'outside'. I failed miserably at this.

Then I became a parent, and my children taught me* that actually, it's perfectly OK to be me, and yes I am special - but (in a bizarrely contradictory way) no more special than anybody else. In other words - there's no such thing as normal. Because the bits of me that conform to what's accepted as normal are also combined uniquely with the bits of me that aren't. And that's true of everybody.

Mol

*I have learnt a lot about myself from my children. They are like little mirrors.

What Mol's said really.

I was certainly an outsider right through school and even university, only really mastering social skills in adulthood. I still prefer a night in to a night out.

These days I don't think of myself as being anywhere near as unusual as I used to because I have by now come across people who can take any one of my dimensions further than I can: they are brighter, cleverer, better with words, more compassionate, funnier, sexier, kinkier, better at making jam, have a dirtier laugh or whatever it might be.

So logically, I know I'm not special. My ego, of course, isn't logical.

I am special
You are eccentric
She is peculiar