From Bell Bottoms to Bookshelves: A Glimpse Into the Life of a Total Misfit
Is there a worse feeling for a young kid, than knowing you don’t fit in? That’s all we want, to be like someone else. It seems so incredibly important in the moment, to belong to an identifiable group. To wear the uniform that says ‘this is my crew’.
What happens when the uniform doesn’t fit?
I started to reflect on the idea of fitting in while getting some groceries. Being a vegan means I occasionally stop by a ‘health food’ store to pick up harder to find items not sold at major grocers or markets.
When I say health food store, I mean the ones with a third or more of their retail footprint devoted to supplements. Protein powders, meal replacements and teas, drinks, shakes, pills for every type of natural, non-medicinal or quasi-medicinal solution to our ailments.
Lately, visiting these stores means being greeted by pamphlets warning me against proposed legislation to increase the regulatory requirements for natural products.
Now, I’m not complaining about the pamphlets - stores are private businesses and as supplements are a large part of their high margin items, it is natural for them to want to fight the proposed changes. What did strike me as unusual was how shocked the cashier was when I stated I was all for increased scrutiny.
She assumed that since I am into healthy eating I must automatically be in their corner. That’s a hard pass.
Turns out, I’ve never been ‘all in’ on anything.
The truth is, many times I desperately wanted to ‘wear the uniform’. I wanted to signal my association with a scene or in group. Hell, even an out group. But the uniform never quite fit. It never felt right.
Looking the Part
Looking at photos of me as a kid and teenager, you would easily guess the time period. Bell bottoms. Heavy corduroy pants. Mini skirts. Leg warmers. Twenty bracelets clanging on my arm. Hoop earrings. Clearly, I am in GenX.
But, at no time could you look at me and tell exactly what music I was into, or even into the most at that time, as that would shift as I discovered new-to-me music. My fashion sense isn’t a uniform that says “Hey, I listen to rap/punk/country/hard rock”. Choose any genre of music and there is a prescribed dress code that never felt right to me.
Listen, I tried.
Looking the part is one of the core subjects kids take in the school of growing up. Where some kids undoubtedly found themselves at ease, connecting with likeminded peers, maybe for the first time in their lives, it would be dishonest for me to pretend that I was one of them. The one thing worse than being a misfit is being a phoney.
Some of this was certainly my pragmatism showing through at a young age. Yes, I loved New Wave music, but I also was a competitive gymnast, so that crazy hairdo needed to return to a competition-friendly style by the weekend. Which didn’t didn’t leave me a lot of options.
Speaking of gymnastics, something I will write more about one day, the years I spent competing, likely represent the most focused I have ever been on any one thing. Literally thousands of hours of practice, research, conditioning and composition. Yet, even then, it still wasn’t my entire life. I tried to maintain other sports, though eventually I had to succumb to the reality that gymnastics, a sport with no season, would limit my opportunities participating in those that did. For all the serious dedication I held to being as good as I could be, and giving over a significant amount of my adolescent years in the process, I also would happily overeat at Burger King before Saturday afternoon practice with one of my teammates. You know, as part of our strict dietary regimen. Chips were absolutely on the menu. And candy. And pop.
So I was a jock right? Or at least hung out with all the other athletes?
Please give me a moment to fully recover from the laughter.
No, I most certainly was not.
Nor was I a nerd, or the cool girl, or whatever other John Hughes classification would be apt for the time. In grade school and high school, those cliques existed and I sort of drifted between them. I knew and was friendly with people in all those groups - it wasn’t the Jets and Sharks, it was just kids figuring themselves out - but rarely did I hang with anyone for too long.
Again, I want to stress that it wasn’t for a lack of trying. It always felt as though, to fully embrace any one thing, I had to suppress some other part of me. My personality, my interests, my hobbies. There was no conscious effort on my part to be aloof. I certainly wasn’t rebellious in the traditional sense. I wanted to belong. It seemed there was no one group that was a good fit.
Think I’m being a little dramatic?
Don’t forget what it is/was like to be an adolescent. You can be ostracized for the stupidest reason. While I looked on in disbelief, two of my girlfriends cried into pillows while we watched Pat Benetar’s video for ‘We Belong’. I had no idea what was going on. They kept stating “you don’t get it”, as I had not exactly been dating up a storm.
We. Were. Ten. Years. Old.
Okay, they might have been 11 or 12. I was ten. I liked the song. It didn’t make me cry. Which made me weird. One of my favourite movies from that year was Dune. Yes, that bizarre version from David Lynch. Not one of my girlfriends had even seen it. Liking weird movies and not crying at love songs? Hello outsider status!
A Little of This, A Little of That
There are so many examples of my eclectic taste.
My music catalogue has enough, and not enough, of each genre to piss someone off. My movie collection? Ditto.
My library contains literary works by Dante, Milton, Dumas, Dostoyevsky, Huxley, Walker, Austen, Poe and Orwell. I’ve actually read them by the way. They aren’t just there for the sake of making me appear well-read. Not that anyone would jump to that conclusion as I also have King, Koontz, Flynn, Cornwell, Brown and Scalzi. A Calvin & Hobbes anthology? Yep. Carrie Fisher’s Wishful Drinking? Of course! I literally have a book called Robopocalypse for crying out loud. I’m not fooling anyone.
When I worked in the tech industry, I felt repulsed by bro culture. When I briefly worked in higher ed, I found the culture strange and radically different than anywhere I’d worked before.
Currently, a side project of mine is writing about horror. Even then, all I do is write about the darkness. Doing so from a very cozy office, complete with warm candles, a fuzzy rose blanket and mini chaise lounge for the cats. I’m not in the darkened dungeon of a castle, standing tall over the moor where fog swirls endlessly across a stark, colourless landscape.
It is remarkable how much my perspective changed over the years. People not being able to classify me in a heartbeat means that I don’t rush to judgement on them. It means I developed friendships with people that truly represent a whole host of opinions, ideologies and quirky tastes. And my life is richer for them being in it. It means finding interesting common ground with people which helps solidify our connection. Such as discovering a shared interest in John Scalzi novels when speaking to someone professionally (shoutout to Tamica! Have you ordered Starter Villain yet?)
It also means feeling more comfortable being me. And, let’s face it, with the variety of interests and narratives I have running through my life at any one time, it means rarely being bored.
