When I was a kid, I immediately felt different in first grade when I realized I was the only left handed kid in the class. I thought to myself, wait, did I misspeak? Am I actually right handed? Why am I the only one? And then everyone looked at me like I was weird.
Later that year, I was eating a yummy lunch in the cafeteria. Typically, I hated lunch at school. By the time we eat, the food was either strangely room temperature (and shouldn't have been) or tasted faintly like the plastic bags my mom packed my sandwiches in. If she just so happened to run out of lunch meat, she would provide a butter sandwich. Actually, it was a margarine sandwich. What is that? It's two pieces of bread with a schmear of margarine. It tasted awful, which means I tossed it and went hungry that day. Nonetheless, a good lunch food day was something to be excited about. The day in question, mom packed some stuffed grapevine leaves in a little tub. Being an ethnic kid, you don't realize what is and isn't standard lunch fare. I soon found out this was abnormal when my friends taunted me, "ewww, you're eating leaves!" They were idiots. I was eating a delicacy and they had no idea.
The above, along with my unique name created an environment whereby I yearned to be like everyone else. I didn't want to be different. I wan't to be "normal". So, I started going by my nickname from the third grade on, and thought that would cure me of what set me apart from my peers. By the time I went to college I immediately shifted and realized that being different felt like freedom. I wanted to stand out of the crowd, and I didn't want to blend in.
Now, at 30, I appreciate the times in life where who I am sets me apart from everyone else. Being me, even when I'm unique, makes me happy. I don't have to try to pretend to be like the other kids. Thank God!
