I am not sure how people do it. I mean write under a pseudonym. Every time I have started writing a post in past few weeks I felt I am making it easier to identify me. But then no one I know knows about existence of this blog. Hopefully. So I guess I do need to shed the fear and start writing. Okay, here goes nothing.
Let me start by telling you a bit about myself so that my latest "crisis" makes sense. I have been a good student all my life. I grew up in a prestigious university campus in India where my dad was a professor. I have always done well in studies. I am a straight A student from Ivy league in US where I did my PhD. Naturally, my friend circle (which includes neighbours and friends) includes people from good universities. Almost all my friends have a PhD degree.
Why am I telling you this? Oh well, the other day it came up during conversation with my girl friend and her sister (they tend to gang up during most of our arguments. Being sister and all, they kind of agree on everything which becomes very frustrating for me but that's another post). The point of discussion being photography (one of my interests) and how I know better photographers than me. I was part of a photography group during my grad school in US. There are quite a few people in my friend/acquaintance circle who take amazing pictures (all of them are amateur photographers like me).
The response to that was "Yeah, but how many normal people do you know who can take better pictures?"
Normal people? Am I not normal? Is my friend circle not normal? Who is to say that I and my circle are abnormal? Who decides what is normal and what is not? To me, all my friends are normal. Okay, some them have few funny quirks. Some of them are quite insufferable as well but they are still very much normal. Thank you very much.
P.S.: Sorry about the rambling. Being new in the city, I still don't have friends here. I need to get a load off myself in order to function.
The Days Are Long, The Years Are Short
1 year ago
2 comments:
Just to play Devil's advocate here and not knowing the ethnicity of your girlfriend and her sister...but could they have meant how many non-photography-professionals when they said 'normal'?? You know...like how many lay-people do you know who can take better pictures? Just wondering out loud.
If that's not what they meant...well, my theory is that NO ONE is normal. Normality is on a continuum and no one is perfectly normal. We are all screwed up in our own wonderful ways! :)
Wish it was true PB. This was not the only instances when me and my friends have been called 'not-normal'. My girlfriend retired to bedroom during my graduation party because my friends were 'not-normal'. We weren't even talking anything about work, just normal chit-chat of everyday.
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