{"id":137435817,"date":"2023-09-27T12:30:09","date_gmt":"2023-09-27T12:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=137435817"},"modified":"2025-09-30T14:18:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T19:18:09","slug":"when-did-you-figure-you-were-kinda-weird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=137435817","title":{"rendered":"When Did You Figure You Were Kinda Weird?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
“Werewolves, we didn’t come up eating french fries through the ages” – Stephen Graham Jones, ‘Mongrels’<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

But first, your bi-weekly <\/em>Vine<\/a>: Monday was Chapter 17, \u201cSaint Louise of Vine.\u201d<\/a> Tuesday was Chapter 18, \u201cNearer My God To Thee.\u201d<\/a> Today is Chapter 19, \u201cThe Ghost & Edith.\u201d<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Longtime followers of my Instagram will know that I have a child. He won\u2019t be important to this blog, don\u2019t worry. All you need to know is he rules, I love him, he\u2019s five years old, and he\u2019s a big weirdo. Longtime readers of this blog will know that \u2018weirdo\u2019 is close to the highest praise I have for a person, and that I know<\/em> I\u2019m a weirdo (not necessarily high praise when I say it about myself, but we\u2019re working on that). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(\u2018Weirdo\u2019 to me is kinda like what \u2018cute\u2019 is to the marvelous poet Alina Pleskova, who was this week\u2019s The Line Break podcast guest<\/a>. She says \u2018cute\u2019 is her word for high praise either at the two-minute mark or the hour-ten mark, I\u2019m not sure. Listen to the whole thing and let me know. No fast forwards, I could be off on those times)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Okay, enough self-promo. Time for self-reflection, huh? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"File:XII<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The first thing I\u2019ll say about my high school is that it wasn\u2019t super cliquey. People hung out with other people they shared interests with, sure, but it\u2019s not like band kids never spoke to athletes never spoke to stoners never spoke to theatre kids or whatever. That said, I consciously self-selected<\/em> as an outsider, like I remember having this thought to myself. \u201cYou\u2019re not like the popular kids, you\u2019re punk as fuck,\u201d I\u2019d think, completely compartmentalizing that I\u2019d been playing soccer or basketball with those same \u201cpopular kids\u201d like the day before. I knew I liked different stuff, though. Not every 16-year-old is as singularly obsessed with putting jazz chords in punk songs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That <\/em>said, though, not every 16-year-old singularly obsessed with putting jazz chords in punk songs also<\/em> can name every NBA champion dating back to 1978 off the top of their head also<\/em> has read most of Anne Rice\u2019s vampire novels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, that\u2019s an easy rhetorical trick. Pick three disparate things about yourself. Bet you seem out there! That doesn\u2019t answer the question of how the hell I got this way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"File:Jordan<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Go back even further and my memory\u2019s near-total fuzz. In elementary school, I liked reading. I liked comics and video games, sure, but not nearly enough for it to be personality-consuming. My main thing was athlete<\/em>, and the fact that I never made a school team and was done with AAU basketball\/travel soccer by age 14 should tell you I wasn\u2019t great. But I was good, decent enough that sports could be my thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The easy, non-I-turned-out-5\u20199\u201d answer for quitting sports is my friends weren\u2019t doing sports, even though they were all pretty athletic, too\u2014we\u2019d play backyard football after band practice. You do what your friends do. Still, it says something that all my friends are also weirdos. There\u2019s that self-selecting as an outsider thing, sorta like Jesus deciding to hang out with fishermen and sex workers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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