I recently accepted an invite that one of my client-friends extended to attend a salon at her house. By salon, I am talking about the old fashioned, Oscar Wilde kind of thing, where artsy intellectuals gather to talk about cerebral concepts and toss around brilliant bon mots.
I am not a party person, and parties where I don’t know anyone are reeeheeeally not my thing, and circle discussions raise my blood pressure just slightly less than partner exercises, so it was a courageous risk on my part to go to this shindig. At first, I was mildly terrified, 100% out of my element, and desperately wishing I had never left my house.
Why did I leave my house on the first place, you ask? Well, I really adore this particular client, Ipek, who makes her living teaching bigwig executives how to tap into their right brains and be more creative. And creativity in general is one of my favorite topics these days. And the subject of this particular salon was utterly riveting: it was on the work of Sir Ken Robinson, an education reformer from Great Britain who believes we don’t put nearly enough emphasis on creative expression in our Western school systems. Please, please, please, if you haven’t already, please watch this video on TED.com.
Indeed, the salon turned out to be a very worthwhile experience, albeit way challenging for me socially. The women were collectively real smart, and we got all into it about creativity and thwarted creativity and how as children we were taught to stifle our creative sides and aim to excel at math and housekeeping instead.
Actually, I must admit—and did, to these ladies—that was not my experience at all. As I recently wrote in a very public letter to my mother, Judith, I was blessed to have lived a childhood rife with creative influences and encouragement. So where did it all go bad? Who was my first artist’s critic?
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Well, as near as I can tell, it all comes down to this boy we’ll call Dennis. I transferred to a new school in 8th grade and had to go through the 13-year old’s excruciating process of making new friends and trying to fit in. I actually knew a lot of the kids there from grammar school, so I had that in my favor. But I didn’t know Dennis, and I thought he was kinda cute. Until one of my friends asked Dennis what he thought of me, and Dennis said he thought I was “weird.”
Calling a 13-year old girl “weird” is probably one of the most cruel and inhumane things you can ever do. I was crushed and humiliated. I think that was the turning point at which I decided that under no circumstances would I ever be “weird” again. I devoted the rest of my high school and college years, and probably most of my twenties, to being as normal as possible. Often to the detriment of my creative side.
For some reason, that all changed for me over the last few years. Suddenly, I think “weird” is the highest compliment. I love my weirdest friends the most. “Weird” to me means eccentric, creative, doesn’t-care-what-people-think. Some of my favorite people are just really weird. The weirder, the better.
By the way, Dennis? I ran into him a few years after high school. He was the manager at our local small town McDonald’s. Not judging, just saying.
