First things first

Hey!


             First things first, I'm weird. I'm quite a weird person. Well according to my course mates, friends, family, and a guy I once had a two to five minutes conversation with on a public transportation bus. I mean come on, even my name is weird. Have you ever met anyone named "Dum Dum" before? Have you?!
     A year ago, if someone had called me weird, I would have been greatly offended and, would probably have argued sternly that everything is subjective, and relative to everyone.

    “I'm not weird! Just because I don’t act in a certain way you expect me to,  doesn’t make me odd.” Those were the words my 14 year old self yelled in defence against my then secondary school seatmate Adesuwa. She exchanged seats with someone else a couple days later. There’s a God people!

   So pretty much my whole life. Okay okay, most of my life, I've been called similar synonyms of weird. Odd, different, strange, unusual, peculiar. That last one was said to me by my biggest crush till date! Here's how it all went down.  Stay with me guys, I swear there’s a point to this.

   We were both in junior secondary school(JS1) at the time, and it was time for our 30 minutes break. Most kids were either eating, chatting with their friends or playing the iconic “I Call On” game outside, but you could see 11 year old me in the back seat area where I could have some privacy, reading Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, a book about finance. It was my brother’s, and I had sneaked it off to school.

    You know that feeling you get, when you just know someone’s looking at you? I know it has a name though but I keep forgetting to goggle it.  Anyway I felt it at that moment, I looked up, and there he was, staring at me. With, intrigue? I felt awkward so I ducked behind my book and forced myself to read through the lines, while knowing he was still staring.

   Suddenly he walked up to me. Using a chair close by as leverage to help him sit on top of my desk. “I’ve only seen my dad reading that. It isn't boring?” First off, I didn’t know this kid, he had come from another class to visit his friend in my class, and my brain was working on overtime, thinking of a rejoinder.

    “No.” Internally I was congratulating myself. Go Dum Dum! Go Dum Dum! Its your birthday! But I guess he wasn’t satisfied with my one word response because, he snatched the book from my hand and tried to read it himself, while I sat there frozen.

        My first impression of him was that he was very.. bright. That’s pretty much the best word I can use to describe him. He wasn’t “bright” in the sense of being a genius or super smart. But “bright” in the sense of his personality. He was almost literally luminous. This was the first time I was meeting this boy, and within minutes I could feel this overwhelming radiation of openness and it was drawing me in. For some reason he reminded me so much of Naruto, one of the characters from the anime named NARUTO. It was one of my fav anime at the time. He not only kinda looked like him, but he seemed as radiant as him. So at this point I was already developing a tiny crush on him.

    He gave the book back to me, chuckling. “Debby eh-” He paused to chuckle again

     Meanwhile, HOW DOES HE KNOW MY NAME? HOW THE HELL DOES HE KNOW MY NAME?! My little me was in panic mode(Ever since I watched the “Inside Out” animation I usually imagine a little me in my head)

“-you are different.” He finally said after a couple of chuckles.

“What?!” Already getting on the defensive.

 “Relax jor,I mean different in a good way. Like peculiar, unique?”

      He was throwing words at me that 11 year old me couldn’t comprehend. And now that I think about it, he probably didn’t  understand their meanings either. Because there was no way he knew that about me within a couple of minutes. That evening when I was home, I rushed over to the sixth edition of my family’s big Oxford Learner’s dictionary, and searched up “peculiar” and “unique” Let’s just say, I liked what I saw.

     Ever since then, I got introduced to Social media, and I don’t mean Facebook because I literally joined Facebook two years ago. I mean Social networks like 2go, WhatsApp, Wattpad, Galaxy, Instagram, etc. And I realized something that changed the entire perspective I had of myself.

                I WASN’T THE ONLY WEIRD ONE.

       I discovered thousands of people that were a gazillion times weirder than I was! It made me ask myself the same questions over and over.
What classifies as weird? Do people even know what weird means? What’s 'normal' then?

      I'm still sorting out the answers to these questions but, I think I'm pretty darn close. Like I said at the beginning of this writeup. Everything is subjective and relative. The concept of “Normal” is subjective. If people discovers something that’s different, something they aren’t familiar with, anything that makes them uncomfortable, its not normal anymore, its “weird”.

       When my friends see me watching Japanese anime, reading manga, using cartoons as my phone wallpaper, and call me weird, its because they don’t like anime themselves, and find it childish because an adult likes cartoons. It doesn’t make me weird, it just means I like animated drawings. Can I hear my fellow Otaku's in the house?!

      When the guy I sat next to on the bus, grimaced when I told him I didn’t eat fruits and called me weird, its because he probably loves fruits and can’t fathom why anyone wouldn’t love them too. Therefore, he concluded, I MUST be weird. That was years ago though, now I do eat certain fruits. A select few like Apples, Pineapples, Bananas, tangerines, and watermelon. So suck it guy-on-the-bus-that-I-forgot-to-exchange-names-with, I like fruits now.

      But when my secondary school crush saw me doing something out of the norm for an 11 year old, he called me different, unique.
    This applies to everyone in the world today, including you.  Everyone is weird in their own way because everyone is different. Unique.

       So, my fellow weirdo’s, join me on my ride as I navigate through life in my own quirky way. I know everyone is a bit of a narcissist in their own subtle way, so I definitely won’t make this blog about me, but about you. Like I mentioned before, I'm pretty weird, and I have a different perspective on a lot of things.    

      I will be giving updates on the entertainment industry, both in Naija and internationally, and I promise to dish out lots and lots and lots and lots and lo- (you get the idea) of information that you will require as a Nigerian and a human being, while putting my own quirky spin on things. So unless you're a cat/dog stealthily sneaking on the internet while your owner's at work, click on the next post.



                  Are you with me?