Werido

This is what we called them when we were younger, and now we just call them nonconformists. 

Do any of you feel like you're a non-conformist?

I certainly do, in my own little world and own little ways. 

And I think there are quite a few people who feel, at least in some way, as if they don't conform.

So the real question is, what type of non-conformist are you?

Bill Vaughn said, "If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist, it's another nonconformist who doesn't conform to the prevailing standard of nonconformity."

After coming across this quote, it brought back quite a few memories of times when I very purposefully did not fit in, not even with the nonconformists.  These times date back to the good, old elementary school days.  I was sometimes given the label 'weirdo', but quickly learned to take it as a compliment.  It came to mean, "Man, you're smart," or "What an imagination you have!" or sometimes, "You're just plain weird." But weird always had a good connotation for me.  I was, after all, choosing to be weird, because in my head I knew what I had to do to be 'normal' and I just didn't want to be that way.  I think it might be human nature to want to be different from everyone else, and I embraced the fact that I was different at a fairly young age.

Junior high and high school were much the same.  But the label changed from 'weirdo' to 'Mormon', which I guess in a non-Mormon culture is the same thing.

But now, at BYU (or as a good friend said, "where everyone is clones"), I don't regularly feel like the great nonconformist that I once was.  It's definitely a different experience for me.  I usually feel...well...pretty normal.  Except for today, when I've had too much time to think about non-school related things and to convince myself that I'm still very much a weirdo.