Normality is subjective. Almost everybody considers the things they like and do to be normal. And anyone who likes or does something else is different. Most of us tolerate these differences with grace and understanding. Others of us, not so much. I know that not every person is the same, so the term normal really shouldn’t apply to people. After all, I’m unique. Just like everyone else.
Normal to me, means routine. When I wake up in the morning I have my shower. Then I get dressed and have my morning cup of coffee while perusing the interwebs for Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress updates. I then head to work for 8 hours of banality. I come home, eat dinner, then spend the rest of the night tending to Baby C and the twins, if they’re here.
Normal, to me, also means blaring my music and singing along while driving. It means blogging. It means putting my children before all else. It means watching Elmo, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and Donald Duck cartoons with Baby C. It means Baby C pointing to all of my Star Wars memorabilia and exclaiming, “Look! It’s a Star Wars!” It means trying to teach Baby C letters, numbers, and colors. It means toys being scattered haphazardly about the living room floor. It means the twins being glued to Facebook or their Xbox. It means looking in the mirror every morning, realizing that I need to shave, and then deciding I’m too tired to do so.
Those things, that are a part of my normal every day existence, are probably not normal to anyone else, but I couldn’t imagine my life without that normality. That sense of familiarity. It’s good to know that while some things change, some things stay the same.
What does normal mean to you, dearest reader? Is normal a good or bad thing?
*This post was inspired by today’s Daily Prompt.
Outtakes
- As I was writing this, Baby C kept sitting in the corner of the couch and yelling, “Daddy! Help! Help! I’m stuck!” When I’d turn around and ask, “You’re stuck?” he’d say, “Okay!” and I’d have to go get him “unstuck.”
Check out these other unshitty™ Daily Prompt posts
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- Aint Nothing Wrong With Being Average Joe | The Adventures of Rain Dance Megan
- I have never been normal and never will | Now Have At It!
- Normal Just Is | Daily Prompt: The Normal | likereadingontrains
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- Nature or nurture????? | My life! My Way!
Mental Defecation 
They seem pretty normal to me, dude!
If you want to know, what is normal to me, read my guest-post at Rohan’s 7 things, called “I Must Be Crazy“.
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I’ll check it out!
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TW,
Like you, I depend on routines. Routines help me cope with the understanding that I have absolutely no control over the impermanence of life.
Red
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I don’t know that it helps me with understanding, but it keeps me in my comfort zone and that’s good enough for me.
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My normal is waking up, going pee, having a cup of coffee and a cigarette, blogging, chatting with my best friend on FB every morning, taking a nap, blogging, watching TV and then blogging. Great life I have, eh? Normal for me though these days.
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Doesn’t sound bad when you put it like that…
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Trust me, it blows balls.
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It may, it may not. I guess everything gets old after a while.
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Yeah, I going on a year now. Very old.
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About the same for me, TD. Although I eat breakfast. Snort snort.
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Oh, geez, mom. You gonna hound me about it? 😉
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I do love to dog you.
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Ugh…
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Normality is boring. I go for abnormal every time 🙂
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That means abnormality is normal to you, thus you’re normal by your own standards and no one else’s.
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Hmmm .. that’s not normal lol
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Lol, no it’s not.
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I love your normal! My normal is me, work (from home), walk the dogs, play with the dogs… It’s pretty boring!
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Do you really think it’s boring or do you merely think it sounds boring to other people?
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Oh… Both.
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Well then change your routine!!
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I add a little variety here and there – the rest is out of necessity. 😉
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Yeah, I know that feeling.
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I am sitting right now outside of C Park waiting on a friend. So there’s a little variety there!
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Yay!
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I like the part where you look in the mirror and decide you’re too tired to shave. I do that – well I don’t have to shave my face. Not yet anyway. But make up tends to be the last thing on my agenda and the first thing left off if I’m trying to get the Things ready and get myself to work in one piece. There’s also the time spent staring at the closet trying to figure out what to wear then selecting the same thing I wear every week.
Speaking of “normal” I have a certain relative who believes what she doesn’t like is abnormal and that includes Star Wars so Thing Two is going to be bullied and treated as a weirdo. Strangely enough she had quite a few kids at her birthday party and even has a little “boyfriend” so I think she’s doing okay.
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If that relative can’t accept her for who she is then maybe that person doesn’t deserve to be a part of Thing 2’s life. My two cents, anyhow…
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That Sounds like A Great Normal To Me !! I Love What I Do..I Wouldn’t Have It Any Other Way..LOL !!
Great Blog !! – Best Regards, ~Randy Garcia.~ 😉
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Thanks, Randy?
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Normal is over-rated. You’re YOU. Be YOU. You do what you do that gets you through the day.
I mean, I’m a trainee nun. That’s definitely not normal, not by anyone’s standards. (And that includes those who are other trainee nuns/monks and those who have taken vows as nuns/monks.)
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I don’t put much stock in normal. Everyone is different in their own way.
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Or, to put it another way, crazy is as crazy does! 😉
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Indeed. Crazy is as I do….
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Normality switches places with ruts for me sometimes, so I have to be careful; if I’m in a rut for too long I start to feel like freaking out to stop being stuck in a loop. On the other hand, if my brain is going wonky, I like having a normal to fall back on, the muscle memory that makes the coffee, rolls a cigarette and boots up the laptop without my having to think about it. My household doesn’t lend itself to an everyday normality, so that hour or so that I’m awake in the morning by myself is sometimes the only time I can impose a routine. Ha, and Baby C sounds hilarious 😉
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Baby C IS hilarious!
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Strangely enough, I hadn’t thought of “normal” in terms of familiarity and routine. I tend to use it more as a blanket term for what is and isn’t appropriate/acceptable, but I like this way of defining it better. I suppose there’s normal in terms of a normal day (everyday, average) and normal in terms of the the appropriate/acceptable, and it’s this second definition that gets us in trouble!
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Oh, don’t get me started on politically correct! I can go all day on that!
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Without being facetious or glib, I have no idea what normal is.
Nor am I particularly interested in finding out.
I do enjoy railing against the mundane and routine, even though there is comfort in that sometimes.
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There’s nothing wrong with not knowing what it is. It’s really defined by each individual person anyway.
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I think there’s a difference between ‘routine’ and ‘normal’. My daughter’s routine used to involve deciding what day-glo eye shadow to wear, what goth clothes to wear, what neon hair extensions to clip in, etc.
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I guess I define a routine as things you normally do on a day to day basis.
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Right, so for my daughter, that stuff was routine, but hardly normal. I think what works best is to be mostly normal, but have one or two weird things to keep it interesting, like a fascination with Star Wars, or a fascination with Japanese visual kei bands.
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It was normal to her even if it wasn’t to you.
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Actually, it wasn’t normal to her, which was her point, I think. She didn’t want to be normal.
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I see. So she was going out of her way to be different. Rebellious.
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Right. Going with ‘squeaky wheel gets the grease’ rather than ‘nail that sticks out gets hammered down’.
It took her a while to realize that she was doing the same thing she felt the “normals” were doing to her, but in reverse.
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Sometimes we have to find things out in our own special ways.
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Sometimes we learn from other people’s mistakes, and the hard way stops being our way.
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Some do. Some don’t.
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Your normal sounds pretty normal to me (and oddly familiar).
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Must be a parent thing
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Normal is…hmm
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Um…okay.
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I have found that what works for me is to do even the most ‘normal’ things in the least ‘normal’ way possible.
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Eh, I just do things the way I want to.
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It works out that way.
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Good question, I’m not sure if my normal is good or bad?
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Exotic?
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that works!
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Simply put, according to a therapy session… those that feel they are “normal”, are in fact the weird ones.
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I guess we’re both normal? My routine sounds the same – minus the poopy diapers. That aside, I’d have to agree. You can throw right and wrong into the discussion as well. Both are subjective as well. At this point we could go Carlin or the Bible…
Which will it be?
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I vote for Carlin. He’s funnier.
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Funny you mention this today, as I just got back in from out of town. Everyone said to my best friend, your friend is not normal! I was like, well people, what exactly is normal? Just cause I’m loud and like to have fun and embrace life and play with the kids in the dirt, I am not normal…hmm….the only person who agreed with my sense of ‘what is normal’ was the tattoo artist today. He asked me if I want my tat ‘normal’ or facing me. I said, what is normal, he’s like exactly, I love that you want to do it different! Great post here my friend. Normal is to each their own.
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Precisely! What kind of tat did you get?
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I got the word faith in Finnish on my right wrist to remind me no matter how bad it gets, just keep going.
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Awesome!
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