Complex Numbers

Weird

It occurred to me recently that if you take anyone who is doing anything and imagine them doing it in the dayroom of an inpatient mental hospital, they'll fit right in.

PROMPT May 23rd

What is something you like to do that other people might think is “weird?”

The above thought came to me just yesterday, in fact, as I was taking my (almost) daily walk around the neighborhood. See, the gym is closed for obvious reasons, but I didn't want to quit exercising entirely (as tempting as it was to consider it), so I have a 30-minute loop I always go on. Except when it's raining hard. I'm not a masochist.

I offset any health benefit from this by smoking a cigar on the way. The primary reason I do this is that it tends to keep people out of my face. This is of great use to me now because it's an automatic social-distancing enforcement measure. I didn't much like interacting with random strangers beyond a "Hi, how's it going, great, have a good one!" anyway, so the pandemic has been a real boon to me. Yesterday was the first Really Nice Afternoon we've had in a long time, and the first time that strange glowing orb appeared in the sky in about a week, so a lot of people were out. It was actually quite heartwarming to see a woman, mother-sense tingling, snatch her kid off the sidewalk in front of me while glaring at me for a reason other than merely "warning pervert approaching danger danger."

But really, lady, I'd have gone around.

So that's one thing for the prompt. Cigars during exercise. I mean, it's not like I inhale.

Pretty much every second house in the neighborhood had someone outside it, though. It was a Friday afternoon, so it probably will be even more active today. The rain had just quit so no one was mowing, but other yard work was getting done, balls bouncing against garage doors, wrenches turning under cars, folks sitting in beach chairs. You know -- perfectly normal, suburban single-family-detached-home-neighborhood activities (though technically I live in a city, not a suburb), each and every one of which, if taken out of context and placed into a mental institution, would confirm to an observer that the individual is exactly where they need to be.

So do that mental exercise next time you're out doing people-watching for "research" for you next "book." Imagine each individual in the dayroom doing the same activities. I should emphasize here that I'm not shaming mental illness or making light of it; quite the opposite, in fact. Apart from violent patients, I'm pointing out that the line between "normal" and "weird" behavior is often blurry, and a matter of context and setting. Also, I feel the need to note that I haven't actually been in a mental hospital so I'm only going by 50 years of movies and TV shows. I always wondered about the extras they always get for those dayroom scenes. Having dabbled in acting myself, I think the background actors probably consider it the most fun they can have at work, with or without their clothes on.

As a final note, the word "weird" is weird. Not only is it one of the many exceptions to the well-known "I before E except after C" rule, but it's one of those words, like "nice," that have changed meaning over time. It used to denote a person's fate or destiny; the Fates were called "the weird sisters" not because they were strange, but because they were considered to rule destiny. Merriam-Webster   has this to say about it:

You may know today's word as a generalized term describing something unusual, but weird also has older meanings that are more specific. Weird derives from the Old English noun wyrd, essentially meaning "fate." By the 8th century, the plural wyrde had begun to appear in texts as a gloss for Parcae, the Latin name for the Fates—three goddesses who spun, measured, and cut the thread of life. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Scots authors employed werd or weird in the phrase "weird sisters" to refer to the Fates. William Shakespeare adopted this usage in Macbeth, in which the "weird sisters" are depicted as three witches. Subsequent adjectival use of weird grew out of a reinterpretation of the weird used by Shakespeare.

Pretty weird, yes?