One Weird Dude

I am a very strange person.

I have memories of being eleven years old, rolling around the yard at my cousins' house, putting a shoe on my head, and singing, "I'm weird, I'm weird, and I'm proud to be weird." I don't think I'm that weird anymore.

But I'm still very weird. And if you don't believe that already, you will.

First of all, you can just tell by looking at me that I'm weird. Although I can't be that weird looking, since last Sunday I was watching the CES broadcast with some members of my ward and they pointed out to me that one of the members of the BYU-Idaho choir looked just like me:
But we actually don't know how much this guy looks like me. He looks like me when he's singing in a choir, but we don't know how he dresses or how he walks or what his voice sounds like. And it's doubtful he's as weird as I am.

I love holidays. I suppose that's not that weird. But what I do with them is. They influence the way I decorate, the clothes I wear, the music I listen to, the shows I watch, and the colors I put on my blog.

But what is perhaps weirdest is the way they influence what I eat. When it comes to candies and desserts, I only eat sweet things when they are in season. So right now, with it being almost St. Patrick's Day, I can eat the shamrock taffies I bought and the gold-wrapped Werther's candies I have. Yesterday I bought a donut with shamrock sprinkles. I couldn't buy any without sprinkles. Last night there was a stake mingle with brownies. I gorged myself on the mint brownies with the green streak, but I didn't touch the plain brownies. Last fall I was telling my coworkers about these eating habits, and they seemed quite intrigued by it. They asked if I could eat any candy in April. I told them that I could eat Easter candy until Easter was over. They asked if I could eat anything in May. I told them that I couldn't for most of May, but that the Friday before Memorial Day, I start the Fourth of July season, so I could have patriotic desserts. This seemed especially funny to them.

I have made allusions on my blog to music I listen to that could be considered normal. But that is a bit misleading. The two musicians who contribute the most to my shuffle playlist are Cherie Call and Vince Guaraldi. Cherie Call is a local LDS artist. Her most famous songs are hardly famous, but they are "It Passes All My Understanding," "Where Faith Lives," and "The Ocean in Me." I have all of her albums, and love all but her first one. Vince Guaraldi is the mastermind jazz pianist behind the Peanuts TV specials.

At twenty-three years old, I still watch the Peanuts TV specials and I even wear Snoopy on t-shirts, pajamas, and ties.

Whenever someone talks about a movie, chances are I haven't seen it. For all intents and purposes, I've never seen the Star Wars movies. (I saw a few as a kid, but I don't remember anything about them.) I saw four movies in theaters last year: the last Harry Potter movie, Puss in Boots, Hugo, and Arthur Christmas. The last two are the only ones I'll likely watch again.

I rarely watch TV anymore. When I was in high school I loved to watch TV. Now I have a guideline that I generally don't watch TV unless I am doing something more productive while I am watching it. My choice in shows is weird. Occasionally I dabble in news or Animal Planet, but most of the shows I watch haven't had a new episode for more than forty years. Part of my fondness for old TV shows is that they're the only ones clean enough to fit my standards, but that's not the only reason. Before I raised my standards eight years ago, I liked Gilligan's Island even more than I liked The Simpsons. I love 1960s sitcoms. Most shows from the 70s and later aren't clean enough, and most of the 50s shows I've seen are somewhat boring (with the exception of I Love Lucy). I'm currently slowly working through DVD sets for three shows, Green Acres, Bewitched, and The Addams Family.

One relic I have maintained from my mission is that I plan my days in a planner the night before.

I dislike physical contact. Especially hugs. When someone tries to hug me, I panic.

I don't like sunlight. It makes me uncomfortable, nervous, and sometimes even depressed. I have preferred overcast and rainy days for as long as I can remember.

I am painfully socially awkward. Everyone who knows me knows that I am no good at starting or carrying on conversations. I tend to stutter a lot.

Whenever someone asks me what my hobbies are, I tell them I don't have any. When they ask me what I do for fun, I tell them I don't have fun. In high school I said my hobby was watching TV, but I don't do that anymore. Mostly I just do homework. When I have free time I waste it online, but it's not a hobby. I like reading when I'm reading, but I have to force myself to read. I go running, but I don't like it.

When I run, I think about jelly beans and socks. (In that sentence, jelly is modifying beans but not socks.) Yesterday when I went running I thought about Thanksgiving and Christmas jelly beans. (Thanksgiving is modifying jelly beans in that sentence.) I think about these things to keep my mind off of the fact that I hate running.

I have weird dreams. I've had a weird dream pretty much every night for the last two months. Last night I dreamed I was with a team of different people: my cousins Joey and Quin, my editing professor, a large coworker from my BYU job last year, a person whose first name was Pilgrim (who does not exist in the real world), a mission companion, and some others. We were by a forest while there was lightning, and someone was explaining how lightning travels among trees. We took a co-ed shower. I told Joey that I was surprised they did that at BYU, but that in real life I didn't think they did that. (I don't know if the shower was a dream within a dream or if I knew I was dreaming.) Then we were playing a video game in which we had to move headless skeletons so that their skulls would fall on them. (That's actually not a bad idea for a game, if you ask me.) Another part of the game involved shaking the console in order to knock out a scorpion so that an ogre could eat it live (knocked out, but alive).

I am a nerd; of that there is no question. But I'm not a very good one. I'm not into fantasy dragons or sci-fi spaceships. I'm not good with computers. I don't really read much, as mentioned above. I hate chess. And the most I get into video games is by occasionally playing Mario or Kirby on the ol' Super Nintendo.

The fact that I write this blog is weird. Other people blog about their vacations or the funny things their kids do. My posts go like this: "I had to study a lot for a geology test this week. I didn't do as well as I would have liked. On the first test I got 92% but on this one I got 87%, even though the professor said people usually do better on the second test than on the first. I would have studied more, but I couldn't. I had to get some editing done for my student journal, and then I had a big project for my editing class. I finished the project just before 1:00 a.m. Thursday night/Friday morning. Now I have to study for a semantics test on Wednesday." (All of those statements happen to be true this week.)

I have zero interest in sports. If it involves a ball, I can't do it. I inherit this from my family. But what I don't inherit from my family is that I don't like even watching sports. Last year I got paid to watch volleyball. It was moderately entertaining, but definitely not what I'd normally choose to do. I know nothing about sports; I can't tell a touchdown from a layup.

I hate dancing. I refuse to dance.

And part of this is because I think certain things about my body, things that would make me a superhero, except that they are neither super nor heroic. I think that the members of my body--my legs, my knees, my neck, my arms, etc.--are somehow different from everyone else's. Or else I think I'm invisible. Sometimes I worry when I cross the street. Or I think that if people can tell that I'm there, they can't see what I look like. I was once at institute and I raised my hand. The teacher, Sheri Dew, called on me by saying, "The brother in the back." I thought, How does she know I'm a brother? But my hair most definitely is invisible.

I suppose all of this explains why I don't make friends. Once on my mission my zone leader asked me something about what I did with my friends. I told him I didn't have any friends. He didn't believe me. "Everyone has friends," he said. So I asked for his definition of a friend. He gave it to me, and I could very honestly tell him that by his definition I didn't have any friends. In high school I thought it was because something was wrong with me. Now I realize it's just because I don't make friends. I'm no good at forming relationships. I may make casual friends for a time, but once they're out of my life, they're out of my life.

There are lots of things from my past that are weird. Like how I sucked my thumb until I was six. Or how when I was eleven I was obsessed with chess even though I never won a single game. Or how in high school I wanted to be a vampire. But these are all in my past, so they don't count.

I'm sure there are lots of other things even today that make me weird. What are they?