I make weird faces when I listen to music.
It doesn’t matter if I’m alone in my room or walking across the campus with my iPod — the look on my face is always the same. I’ve tried describing it to people, but I can never fully do it justice. I guess it’s sort of this weird mixture of mild confusion and intense pain. Like, imagine how I’d look if you asked me about my day and then punched me in the face before I could answer. It’s like that, only much, much worse.
And I hate it. I hate how I look like I’m taking a huge crap when I jam out to a song. Really, it kills me.
When I mentioned this to a few of my friends, they started laughing. “Oh, great,” I thought, “now I’m going to get made fun of.”
But after the laughter died down, something strange happened: My friends didn’t make fun of me. In fact, they actually complimented me on my oddball faces.
“Wait, what are you talking about?” I asked, completely taken aback.
“Dude, we’ve noticed it before, and we think it’s great,” one of my friends said.
“Yeah. It’s what makes you who you are,” another replied.
And that was that.
It got me thinking about how unnecessarily self-conscious people are about their quirks, myself included. To think I spent my entire life agonizing about a part of my personality my friends not only appreciated but actually identified with me. I’m not saying I’m suddenly proud of the way I look when I listen to music — far from it. I’m just saying it’s something that makes me who I am, and maybe I shouldn’t hate what makes me different.
I mean, we all know people who do quirky things, and I bet most of us identify that person solely through their particular quirks.
My old manager Alissa never knew how to say the word “goodbye” correctly. Instead, she combined the words “bye” and “OK” into something that sounded vaguely like “OKbye-e.” Was it weird? Of course. When I first heard her say it, I thought my brain was playing tricks on me. And when she said it a second time, I laughed my ass off. But eventually, it became the one thing that made Alissa, well, Alissa.
Have you ever read one of university President Dan Mote’s e-mails? Have you ever understood one? No, you haven’t. That’s because Mote speaks in riddles. And while I don’t always enjoy slogging through a 40-paragraph treatise that sounds important but winds up being about Maryland Day, I tolerate it. I tolerate it because writing long-winded e-mails that make no sense is what makes Mote who he is.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, fly your freak flags high, brothers and sisters. Your quirks are what make you different, and what makes you different is what makes you interesting. Let’s get a little weird. Let’s stop marching to the beat of one drum.
You know, so I can finally stop making these stupid faces.
Mike Sanders is a junior history major. He can be reached at sanders@umdbk.com.
