Shoe Size 12

Shoe Size 12

“I’m not weird, I’m just wired differently.”

                                 -‘Dude, I’m An Aspie.’

When you walk in a crowd, do you ever feel as if you are somehow walking on a different path? When you speak with a bunch of people, do you feel as if you don’t quite agree completely to what they have to say, even though everyone else agrees? Do you ever feel as if you belong in a group, and yet not quite?

If you do, proceed to the next set of questions:

Do you randomly sing to yourself in public places? Do you randomly scribble notes in a textbook? Do you lick off the cream before you eat your biscuit? Do you have a laugh that sounds odd? Do you casually do your dance jig in the middle of the road while you are walking? Do you not care if you wear red polka-dot pants with a fluorescent pink shirt? Do you earn the ‘weird stares’ from people? Are you always the misfit?

What I’ve learnt from being in an age where you are judged on how similar or dissimilar you are to the people around (and then accepted only if you are ‘like’ them) is that you cannot change yourself to please or displease anyone. If you are ‘different’, if you are ‘eccentric’, if you are ‘not quite there’, if you are an ‘oddball’, if you are a ‘misfit’, if you are the ‘shoe size 12’, then it is imperative that you be proud it, of how and who you are, because later in life, it will define who you become. Vivian Stanshall says, “I'm not different for the sake of being different, only for the desperate sake of being myself. I can't join your gang: you'd think I was a phony and I'd know it.” Accepting your eccentricity will bring out the fact that you were firm and confident enough to believe in yourself and not always follow the crowd.

What I have stated now is not as easy as it is made to sound. But it is not impossible. Let me give you an example. My father is a man who is quite the known member of the society. It is hence presumed that he adapts to the ways and means of said society. Except that he doesn’t anymore. He has chosen to forego his monthly hair-colouring sessions and let his hair grow out white at the age of 47. When with friends and family, he cracks sick jokes and decides to laugh at them himself. He has recently pierced his ears and wears blue studs till he can find silver rings. He doesn’t care about what people will think when he sings aloud to himself in public. It may have taken him all of 20 years to realize that it doesn’t matter whether or not you fit into the society, but he has realized it and he is working towards the change. And that, I think, is true acceptance of your weird self.

Many thinkers and philosophers have preached and written excessively about how it is important to embrace peculiarity. I believe that acceptance of an oddity is basically the acceptance of new and revolutionary ideas into the society, and this has been proven time and again when one refers to the biographies and the autobiographies of people who made it big in our world.

Lastly, I would like to urge everyone who has read this piece and relates to it, to stop criticizing themselves while trying to be something they cannot be, and to accept who they are, because they are no less beautiful. Tila Tequila says, “I think every person has their own identity and beauty. Everyone being different is what is really beautiful. If we were all the same, it would be boring.” If it took my father 20 years to realize that being weird is okay and that it can make you happy, then our generation, who learns at least twenty times faster, should definitely realize it earlier. Maybe then we would see a people sans so many psychological problems, sans bullying, sans judgement, learning to be a more accepting race, and promoting happiness instead of only success. I would like to end with a quote by Robert Frost, who says, “A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity.”