For instance, a guy I studied with about 11 or 12 years ago had a plan to have his wife have a waterbirth. Then, he was going to teach his kids to swim at an unusually early age, and have them swim for at least three hours every day, until they were old enough to have waterbirthed kids of their own, and then make them swim for at least four hours a day, etc. etc. His idea was that in a thousand years, his progeny would have evolved into a race of merpeople, and he would be remembered as their forefather. He’s obviously not the most orthodox Muslim in the world, and there are better ways to leave your name in the pages of history.
I know another guy who constantly tweets “RIP (insert celebrity name here)” messages on twitter, even when they’re not dead, and even occasionally when they’re busy hosting award shows live on worldwide television. When I asked him why he did it, he told me that he was attempting to kill by ESPN, and that eventually he’d get it right and replace Morgan Freeman as the Head Of The Assasins. Clearly he didn’t see the end of the movie. And he’s crazy. And he can’t tell the difference between New Age hocus-pocus and a popular sports channel.
There's the girl I was in film school with who dressed like a goth and played Cradle Of Filth on iPod loud enough for it to come tumbling out her headphones at around a million decibels, but decorated her car in Mickey Mouse paraphernalia (with absolutely no irony intended). There’s the kid who dressed in camouflage all the time and went around hunting snakes. In urban environments. Usually malls and other retail outlets. There’s the guy who bought branded clothing and then insisted on wearing it inside out cause he refused to be a part of the “global capitalist name-brand conspiracy”, and the guy truly believes David Icke writes historical non-fiction. The twins who believe they were abducted and impregnated by aliens and are now searching for their kidnapped crossbreed children. The girl who believes the world was created in literally and exactly seven days a few thousand years ago, and that the Bible is a historical document. The girl who believes that evolution is a lie, and that it’s evil (not realising that it can’t be both... either it’s real and evil, or it’s a lie and it doesn’t exist and therefore can’t be anything, much less evil...)
The list goes on and on, and I guess some people would write these crazies off without so much as a second thought. But I wouldn’t have them any other way. The whole world is full of so-called “normal” people, and for the most part, they’re all boring as hell. Life isn’t about living inside a tiny little box and never experiencing anything outside of own comfort zones. It’s about finding and enjoying new experiences. It’s about learning a little more each day, and growing as a person. It’s about boldly going where we’ve never gone before. It’s about meeting new people and seeing things from their point of view. Sure, you might not agree with them, you might now even like them, but to write them off as freaks simply because they see the world differently than you isn’t just ignorant, it’s spitting in the face of life itself.
To live a life of endless repetition and countless rehashing of the same old thing day after day isn’t a life at all. It’s a living death. So to all my weird-ass friends I say “Shine on, you freakish diamonds!” The world would be an unbearably dull place without you.
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