Life Lessons from a Teenage Implant

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Always be You. Don't let anyone tell you it's wrong to be weird. Weird is the way they look at you. Weird is not weird, it's the right to stand out.

~Eva May

     I was in sixth grade when I wrote those words on a piece of paper in English class. It was nearing the end of the year, and we were getting ready to move up to middle school. (At my elementary school, grades went from K-6th, and we entered middle school in seventh grade.) My teacher gave us a sheet to fill out: basic, elementary things, like your favorite memories of the year, or short stories we had to tell. However, one thing that our teacher stressed on was the section where we were to give advice to the rising sixth graders. After all, sixth grade was a huge milestone in our educational careers at the time, and the current fifth graders were everything but calm.

     I think that moment in my life was one of the first moments I really started to realize how important change was. Of course, I had always wanted change, because I had always been taught that change was good, but It is hard to understand the direness that change calls for at that age. However, I wanted to impact the upcoming grade, and for the better. And so, I wrote those words.

     Let's get one thing clear for the rest of this book: I would define myself as "weird." Yes, there are many different forms of the word. Some, insulting. Others, a bit more playful, but the point of this, I have always considered myself a little bit quirky.

     So what is weird to me? As the you can see, in the quote above, weird is the right to stand out. I stand out in a crowd, because I am not afraid to show who I am or what I believe in. I have burst into song, faked an accent, broke into dances, and made funny faces to strangers in the middle of Walmart. I have sat, while traveling in a car, with a gigantic sock monkey, and used it as a puppet to wave at people at stop lights. Keep in mind that I am sixteen years old, not six, and willingly admit that. In any particular case, I am not afraid to be me, as I am. Part of this may be because of my theatre background, but, I have always been this way, and happy to say so.

     So why did I choose those particular words? Why choose to speak about being weird, about standing out? It may seem cliche actually, but this is something that has mattered to me for a long time.

     For fourteen years of my life, I grew up in northern country. And when I say north, I mean two hours from the Canadian border, forty below degrees Fahrenheit without a windchill north. When you are that far north, things start really thinning out. Towns become small, and far and few. And I lived right in between two country towns, for the most part of my time up there. One had a population of 518, and the other 1,392. I went to school in both towns, and in both towns, learned the way of the social cliques that revolved so tightly around our small town lives. In small town Minnesota, and I think in any small town, it is beneficial to have the "right last name." I was not born in Minnesota, and nor was my family, so I would not and did not have a name that fit the bill. My family spent much of years as outcasts, and in school, I was bullied for my quirks, and for my talent as a performer and writer

     In school, then and now, I am an exceptional student. You could even have called me a teacher's pet, as I got straight A's, and was not afraid to answer in class. I had a few different gifts, I liked to sing, and I was not all that bad, and this made the kids jealous. The bullying was never physical, but some of the verbal things that were said and the amount of body language truly hurt. They would make it a point to glare at me every time I walked by in the hallways, or ignore me when I would try to say hello. They would call me Jesus freak, drama queen, and a series of other slang that would leave an imprint on my memory.

    Fifth grade was when it was the worst. There were a lot of days I came home crying, because of what was said. It was a lot of nasty drama, over little things that left bigger wounds and deeper scars than intended. Some days were worse than others, one day that sticks out in my memory is track and field day, which was the lowest point in my whole year. I will spare you that instance for now, for sake of rambling. However, the point is, I always stayed "weird." I had decided that the only thing those girls would be allowed to do to me was to make me "tougher". They would never change who I was.

     Which, brings, us back to myself writing those words in sixth grade. After you have been bullied, and things have been resolved, they do not go away overnight. I still got the occasional glare or cold shoulder, and the drama never really resolved. I don't see how it ever truly can with middle school girls, though I am happy to say that I get along fine with some of those people now.

     Yet, when writing those words, I wanted to make sure that no one else ever had to feel as if they needed to wear a mask to live a bearable life, because if your life is bearable, then you are not living at all. I wanted every girl, boy, and child after me to be themselves, even if it meant they were "weird."

     Being "weird" is why people bully. They are too narrow minded to realize that diversity reaps rewards nothing else can sow. If a machine were to have only gears as parts, how would it run? It needs pistons and cogs and levers to function properly. The world needs you and me, as we are, not as it tells us to be. You, my dear reader, have a right to stand out. In every way, you have right to be weird. You have a right to be silly. To be colorful. To promote change. Because the bullies, they are not the change makers, you are. So if you only walk away from reading this remembering one thing, let this be a mantra in your head during the best and worst of times: Always be you. Don't let anyone tell you it's wrong to be weird. Weird is the way they look at you. Weird is not weird, it is the right to stand out.