A little love for the annoying weirdos

As is so often the case, Arlie chose the absolute worst time to have an emotional breakdown.

Not only was she supposed to be getting ready for school, ideally, she would have been wandering the hallways on her way to class at that very moment. Instead, we were standing in the middle of my bedroom, she and I, a hair-brushing, pair of shoes and pants away from being the bare-bones definition of “ready to go.”

That’s the moment she picked to, without warning, become an erupting volcano of tears and anxiety.

“Nobody likes me,” she wailed, her face wet and red and crumpled like a discarded piece of paper.

Mandy, still in bed in a futile attempt to snag a few precious moments of additional sleep before work, sat up at the sound of her daughter’s distress. She said something along the lines of, “Who doesn’t like you, Arlie?”

“Nobody!” Arlie yelled, as if she’d already answered the question. Which, I mean, I guess technically she had, even if that answer had been vague and, I suspected, somewhat exaggerated.

I said as much, albeit not in those exact words.

“What about Ozzy?” I asked, referencing one of her closest friends and the classmate about whom we’d heard the most. “Doesn’t she like you?”

Between harsh sniffles, Arlie told us that, yes, Ozzy did in fact like her.

“Well, then,” I said. “It’s not true that ‘nobody likes you.’ Now get your pants on.”

In my mind, that settled the matter. I was incorrect.

Arlie exploded into another round of unexpected bawling.

“But she’s the only one!” she said.

It was Mandy’s turn to give empathetic parenting a try.

“Calm dawn, Arlie. You’re just making yourself upset. Why do you think the other kids don’t like you?”

The emotional storm waned again.

“They say I’m annoying,” Arlie said, still on the verge of breakdown but keeping it under control.

She sniffed a few times, then added, “And weird.”

That sent me straight back to childhood, releasing memories of wounds that had cut deep but had healed long ago.

“Weirdo” … “dork” … “annoying” … “strange” … all accurate descriptors, of course, but at the time, as a kid just trying to make it to the last school bell, they hurt like hell.

I was such a try-hard kid, so desperate for everyone to like me and doing everything in my power to ensure they didn’t. I talked too much and too loudly (still do); I cracked jokes only I thought were funny (still do); I cut up and acted out, never one to let the blank-eyed stares of irritated confusion stifle my boundless manic energy. And though I can’t say I enjoyed being mocked by my classmates, it’s not like I ever considered stopping the behavior that led to their derision. Attention was attention, I suppose.

But guess what: 30-something-years later, none of that matters. At least, not outwardly. Although my peers’ ridicule — which continued well into high school, where I connected with other “weirdos” like myself — stung, the fact that I endured it without ever feeling the need to change the core of who I am is a better outcome than the alternate reality in which I bent to pressure to be someone else. Instead, I learned how to adapt my personality to my environment.

It’s no secret that I … uh … am the way I am. But I’ve learned there are times and places where, just maybe, an endless stream of jokes about cannibalism and “Simpsons” references might not be appropriate. There’s only so many times you can get kicked out of a funeral before you start questioning your decisions.

Of course, it’s hard to explain all of that to an upset 8-year-old two minutes before she should have been sitting in her classroom. To let her know that you can’t focus so much on the people who don’t like who you are when there are those — even if it’s just one or two — who do. There’s no easy way to explain that there will always be some people who love you for being “weird,” some people who don’t, and a lot of people who don’t care either way.

So, I did the best I could in the fleeting moments before the start of a school day she was suddenly dreading: I knelt, wrapped my arms around her, and told her the thing all of us “weirdos” need to hear now and again.