Bad Habits - Got my freak on - September 19 2001

You're going to be one of those old ladies who wears hats, a friend said to me.

"I wear hats now," I told him.

"You know what I mean," he said. "You're quirky." And that in a nutshell sums me up, I suppose. There are people who grow up to wear hats, and there are those who do not. I will be wearing hats, probably the kind that children point at and say, "Mommy look at that lady's hat."

I am so oblivious, I will just think the precious little imp is waving and will smile and wave back. For now, I only wear hats during the winter — a fuzzy leopard-print Russian-looking hat, a little beret, a skull cap. But it's only a matter of time before the pill boxes, the bathing caps and the straw farmer's hats start creeping in.

I realized a few years ago that everyone I know thinks I'm a freak. And not only had they been thinking it, but they had been telling me. I just thought they were kidding. For about 20 years, I thought they were all kidding. I thought it was just a term, not slang exactly, but just a term of endearment somehow. How else could I explain that people from Charleston to Albuquerque to Boston to Atlanta all called me a freak?

I am not a freak. When my brothers would shake their heads and say, "You are such a freak," I thought maybe they were just emotionally clogged and that was their way of saying "I love you." When my best friend would call me a freak, I thought the same. A few years ago, for the bazillionth time, my best friend Candy said, "You are such a freak. That's why I love ya."

I said, "I'm not a freak, you're a freak. Why do you say that? Name one thing I do that's freaky."

I'll never forget the expression on her face. Almost like her brain had stalled out, trying to think which item for exhibit she should bring out first. As if she were thinking, "How far back should I go? All the way back to third grade and the first day we met (the day she started her lifelong coveting of my Cookie Monster pocketbook, but more on that later)?"

Let's not confuse "freak" with "cool" or "alternative" or "interesting." I'm pretty sure I'm none of those things. God knows, I try to look normal. I try not to call attention to myself. I try to blend. But as my best friend Mandy points out, "Yeah, you have to try."

As soon as I open my mouth, the jig is up. I was lamenting the fact that everyone thinks I'm a freak one day at work and my boyfriend (who actually said to me, "You're my weirdest girlfriend ever,") tried to console me with "nobody thinks that." Then one of my co-workers comes by with a book. "Here, Jane, you're the only person I know twisted enough to enjoy this." Not five minutes later, a guy comes up and hands me an essay called, "Why I Hate Dolls." "Here Jane, this looked like you." The same guy last week handed me a press release on the largest Wear-Dated Wing Chair in the world (9 feet tall and somehow related to literacy). He said he took one look at it and knew who it was for right away.

Martha Graham once said to Agnes de Mille, "There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is transformed through you into action. And because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and be lost. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable, nor how it compares with other expression. ... It is your business to keep the channel open."

I didn't sign up to be a freak, I just keep the channels open.??