Weird Is a Relative Concept

Some high-school friends and I had a saying: "Weird is a relative concept."

The phrase came from a now-deposed Christian fundamentalist comic (how funny it seems today that I was ever a fan of his work, and even collected his albums), yet these particular words still ring quite true for me. If you're different from the norm, you don't feel that different when you surround yourself with others just as different as you.

That's the story of my life. Many of my attitudes and closely held beliefs are decidedly un-mainstream. But for years I have consciously surrounded myself with like-minded friends and online communities where my philosophies are considered more or less "normal." So, while I have always known I was different, I was surrounded by so many others who were different in the same way that I was that I forgot what it was really like to be different. Does that make sense?

Well, becoming a mom for the first time changes the circles in which you operate. Or at least it has for me. Suddenly I have this thing in common with the relatives that I've drifted away from because, in my previous life, I didn't have anything in common with them. My baby also seems to give other moms free reign to strike up a conversation in the pediatrician's office or the grocery store when before I would have been anonymous. And I find myself frequenting entirely different online communities than I ever did before.

Now I realize just how "different" I am.

I babywear in suburban yuppie central where the stroller reigns supreme. I use cloth diapers in the midst of our ultra-disposable society. We co-sleep with our baby while our day care provider asks why he isn't accustomed to sleeping alone in a crib. And I respond immediately when my baby cries while everyone else talks about fostering independence at an early age.

Not only do these practices make me odd in the suburban-working-mom circles that I run in, but my fierce independence and the fact that I work outside the home make me odd in attachment parenting circles, too. For a while I found support for my attachment parenting practices on various boards around the Internet, but those are mostly frequented by conservative stay-at-home moms who often say "My husband won't let me do X."

Gets on soap box--
Your husband won't LET you? What is this, 1807???
Gets off soap box--
Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest. Moving on...

I think I'm in the middle of a paradigm shift. Or at least I think that's what the experts would call it. With Conner in the picture now, I can't really keep myself sheltered in my little world where, relatively speaking, my weirdness is considered normal. I have a feeling, as I deal with parent-teacher conferences and soccer games, that I'm just going to have to get used to that old feeling I had in grade school where I just plain ol' didn't fit in. Oh, what a joy this is going to be.

But I have to say that I'm a little proud of myself that I'm not giving in. Despite all this new pressure to do as everyone else does, I'm not doing as everyone else does. And I hope to raise Conner to believe in two very specific things. First, that he's not a lemming and doesn't have to do what everyone else around him is doing. And second, that people who are different shouldn't be treated any differently than everyone else. If he internalizes those concepts, I think I'll have done my job as a parent.

And, who knows. Maybe he'll be weird, too, and find a group in which his weirdness is also a relative concept.