The Weird Ones

There's an advert on TV at the moment which says there are 3.5 billion women in the world, and no two are the same.

 The truth is that almost all of them are exactly the same, in every way that matters. All people are. They want the same things, dream the same dreams, eat the same foods. They fit into society as though moulded to it, which of course they are. Governments spend a lot of time and money teaching children to be good little adults, so we grow up to pay our taxes and not cause trouble. And so we're all made to be the same.

 Strangely, small societies tolerate differences better than large ones. A hunter-gatherer clan of 200 people will accept little Bobby's weird habits, because someday he might see something everyone else missed. But a nation of 65 million is harder to manage, the leaders don't want people shooting off on their own all the time, so they tell Bobby to stop it and be quiet. We're taught to conform. Fit in and don't make a fuss, right?

 But you know, the people who do make a fuss, who shoot off sideways the moment they see something interesting... those are the fun ones.

 They're the ones we write about. JK Rowling once said she stopped the Potter books because nobody wants to read about Ron, Harry and Hermione playing bingo at Hogwarts when they're 60 years old. What's interesting about that? Nobody would read the story of Anna Smith, a Hufflepuff in Harry's year who isn't mentioned because she never does anything. And the truth is we're nearly all like Anna. We're here, but we make up the ranks. The faceless extras of life, filling the background and no more unique than a sardine in a can.

 (Yes, I include myself in this. Henry David Thoreau once said only one man in a million was truly awake, and he'd never met one. Neither have I. And I think one in a billion might be a closer estimate.)

 But the most interesting of all? The ordinary person who is thrown into something big, and finds out he/she isn't ordinary after all. Like Harry Potter, who's just an ordinary wizard (yes, I know), quite talented but no genius, with nothing to make him stand out except Voldemort. These are the people we write about, or read about. They're the ones I like in life too - the wounded, the misfits, people with stories written on their faces and told in the things they do.

 Most of the time they're called the weird ones. You know, the people who make us say, "everyone's got one friend like that." But I like 'em.

 Keep not fitting in, folks. It would be boring without you.