I would describe myself as a passionate person. I have a passion for food, cologne, cheese, sports, nature, family, literature, guns, knives, soda, watches, and I could go on. In fact, I rattled off, lets see…eleven, that's right, eleven different categories of passion in my life in all of about fifteen seconds. How can a person have so many interests? While I enjoy a litany of hobbies, at times I become frustrated because I don't have the time or money to pursue them all to a suitable level. Maybe a perfect world would be one where I could spend my days doing things I'm highly passionate about, like sampling various cheeses as I fly fish. It seems like my little brother Joe has expressed the same sentiment in his ever-vigilant support of communism. That is another blog for another day.
Does this aforementioned passion make me eccentric? It seems like the non-passionate folk are always describing truly passionate people as being eccentric. Eccentric- (adjective) deviating from the recognized or customary character, practice, etc.; erratic; peculiar; odd. This definition is straight from Webster's. In short, to be eccentric is to be weird. Sounds about right. As a child, the word weird followed me around like stink follows a bum. In the third grade Joe and I used to travel the neighborhood in our coonskin caps. I wore mine everywhere, school included. It didn't take long before kids started calling me Davy Crocket. That, paired with the fact that I didn't mind eating bugs (grandma Loi once told me that ants were full of protein, so naturally…), I guess the kids in my school had a pretty legitimate case against me. Coonskin caps went out of style after the Confederates beat the Rebels in 1865, and eating bugs? Not normal. While I was in the MTC, I was approached by a fellow missionary-in-training who enthusiastically proclaimed, "David Carter!? I remember you from Driggs! You used to wear a coonskin cap to school!" It seems I made an impression, and unfortunately, I couldn't recall this fellow from anywhere. Perhaps being weird merits being remembered. I would argue that to be remembered for being weird is better than being entirely forgotten. Or is it?
The funny thing is, I never really minded if kids thought I was weird. I was pretty comfortable in my own skin. I still am. I have a long and colorful history of doing absolutely bizarre things that even I can't explain. Maybe that's part of my genetic make-up. Weirdness. I wonder if I will pass this on to my offspring?
The "weird" things is, when I sat down today I had no intentions of writing a blog post about my absurdities. I was planning on writing about my guitars and my love for that wonderful instrument. I struggled for fifteen minutes before these words of weirdness came flowing through my fingertips.
To end this unexplainable, meaningless rant, I'll pose a question: what is normal? Is it the exact opposite of me? An uninspired, disinterested pessimist who sees the world only for it's failings while recognizing none of it's beauties? Or is normal somewhere in between? Perhaps it's all relative and our perceptions of normality and obscurity are entirely based on our own particular frame of reference. While admitting that I am surely weird to some, I am entirely normal to myself. Who do I think is weird? I better not say. But if I had to guess, I'm sure they think I'm every bit as strange.
