Kimberly Emerson

Normal is defined by my beloved dictionary.com as “conforming to the standard or the common type; usual; not abnormal; regular; natural.”  Interesting, but hard to quantify.  (And by the way, dictionary.com, I deduct five points for the usage of “not abnormal.”  Defining a word by using a derivation of that very word does no one any good.)  If we go with the definition of being “usual,” I guess we can call someone normal if the things that describe them can also be used to describe a majority of the population.  Or we could go with “natural,” which is to say, “existing in or formed by nature.”  (Again with the word derivation.  Really.)

Let’s take the first instance.  What does the “usual” person, or the person with characteristics mirroring those of the majority of the population, look like?

The normal person is a 29-year-old man who is Mandarin Chinese –

Oh, wait, you wanted the normal person for the United States?  Well, that’s a whole different question.  (Where not cited, the following facts come to you courtesy of www.indexmundi.com and www.census.gov.)

The normal person (for the United States) is a 38.2-year-old Caucasian woman.  She is married.    She has two children.  She identifies herself as a Christian, but doesn’t usually go to church.  (This information comes from religioustolerance.com.)  She has her high school diploma but does not have a college degree.  She and her husband bought their house.  She lives in an urban area.  She’s 5’4″.  She weighs 165 lbs.  (From the Center for Disease Control.)  She identifies herself as pro-choice (religioustolerance.com).  She favors legalization of gay marriage. (gallup.com).  She has either a cat or a dog or both living in her home.  She votes in the major elections, but doesn’t usually make it for the non-presidential ones (infoplease.com).  In either case, however, she is more likely to vote than her husband is (about.com).  She wears glasses or contacts (glassescrafter.com).  She worries about security gaps in Facebook’s new Timeline feature (digitaltrends.com).   She eats out 4 or 5 times a week (ucsdnutritionlink.org).

Does this sound familiar?  Did you read the previous paragraph and think She’s describing me!  Is she psychic?  How does she know I worry about Timeline?  Probably not.  According to this set of criteria, most people are not normal, because they differ from this description in one way or another.  If there is one woman out there who fits the specifications exactly, she’ll only do so for another five weeks.  By then she’ll be 38.3 years old and will be just another weird person like the rest of us.The point to take away from this exercise may not be to see how far away from normal we are, but to wonder why on earth would we want to be any closer?  Normal does not mean perfect.  The description above assigns Mrs. Normal a BMI of 28.1, which means her doctor has probably told her to lose a few pounds.  Actually, Doc probably didn’t have to, because Mrs. Normal may not have perfect vision, but she can still see the anorexic models and TV stars everywhere.  She’s aware that society frowns on her figure, and probably spends a lot of time disparaging it herself.  She doesn’t have a college degree, which means a whole bunch of job opportunities are beyond her reach.  Considering that she has less than $25,000 saved for retirement (bargaineering.com), she probably doesn’t have a whole lot of extra cash laying around to go back to school if she feels like it, either.  And besides all of that, really, who wants to spend her spare time worrying about Timeline?

One of the other descriptions for the word “normal” is probably a better definition – “natural.”  Meaning, in yet another of dictionary.com’s breaches of definition etiquette, “existing in or formed by nature.”  Or, as defined by Kimberly, happening without any help from people.  Want to know what happens without our assistance?  Lots of things.  Heterosexuality is natural – in some people.  Homosexuality is natural in others.  It occurs in people and in animals – see this News Medical article.  (We won’t even get into the sexual habits of the plant world.  I’m pretty sure you don’t want to know.)  Being short is natural.  Being tall is natural.  Putting on weight is natural.  So is not being able to put on weight, if you’re Twiggy.  (Seriously, you can read one of her theatre bios.  She didn’t want to be that skinny and tried desperately to put on weight.  I believe her.  Teenage girls can be merciless to their less-curvaceous female classmates.)

Let’s settle the issue – no one is normal.  Or, if you’d rather look at it that way, everyone is.  Me, I prefer to say that Normal is a city in Illinois, and the rest of us are individuals.  Stop punishing other people for not being like you, and stop punishing yourself for not being like other people.  Go forth and be yourself, whatever that happens to be.  As a matter of fact, be as yourself as you can – without breaking any laws, that is.

Kimberly has wasted some of her life trying to be normal, and intends to spend the rest of it making up for lost time.