(~5 minutes to read)
For a long time now, I’ve wanted to analyze the degree to which my desire to be different has moulded me as a person.
Stop!
Before you click away to somewhere else on the interweb, please be assured that this is intended to be primarily an entertaining piece, although if you get any nuggets from it, then it will be a bonus (and, frankly, a miracle).
Here are a few situations where retrospectively I realize that I made a decision to be different.
TV Programmes
When Monty Python’s Flying Circus first aired in the late ‘60s, many of my school friends became instant addicts. One friend in particular was obsessed with the name “Dinsdale” and spent days going around the school grounds saying it in the way that Spiny Norman said it at the end of the episode that featured the Piranha Brothers sketch. I resisted MPFC like mad (if for no other reason than I didn’t want to be caught calling “Dinsdale” at five second intervals in the school grounds), but as the total antithesis of being different would say, “Resistance is futile” and I became assimilated. And how glad I was!
Around the same time, others of my school friends were fans of the band “Free”. (Even if you don’t recall who they were, you’ll likely know their big hit “All Right Now”. ) One friend bore a distinct resemblance to Paul Rodgers, the group’s singer, and four of them got a band together to play Free’s music. I couldn’t see the attraction, preferring the music played on the BBC’s radio stations. But once again, the Borg got me. I heard Paul Kossoff’s frugal, mournful guitar playing and was hooked; I’ve been trying ever since to get even half way to making my guitar playing sound like his.
Blackadder (for the uninitiated, a historical comedy starring Rowan “Mr. Bean” Atkinson) was another thing I vowed not to like when it first came out. But for some perverse reason I became attached to Baldrick, and grew to love the programme. (Actually, it was the Borg, in the shape of Mrs. H., that converted me.) Now I quote from it regularly, and I own not only the entire collection of shows on both VHS and DVD, but also the scripts for all four seasons.
Likewise, Red Dwarf (a spoof “lost in time and space” scenario comedy) was a show that I was determined to hate, if for no other reason than that three of the principal characters exhibited personality traits that, if I spotted them in my own personality, would cause me to garrotte myself with my G string (that’s the third string on my guitar – I’m not that different!). But the show stood the test of time and endeared itself to me, possibly because I identified myself with Kryten, the paranoid and put-upon mechanoid.
Guitars and Cars (not Cadillacs)
When I bought my first halfway decent guitar, I chose a Shaftesbury copy of a Rickenbacker semi-acoustic guitar. This at a time when it was the thing to buy a Les Paul copy or, if money allowed, a genuine Fender Telecaster. It took me a few years to conform, but I did it in spades when I bought a 1976 Gibson Les Paul – which I still own. (I’ve since conformed even further, when my family bought me a Fender Stratocaster for my 60th.)
When my friends were buying and driving Fords, I bought a Triumph 2000. This was in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis, and my car almost certainly used more gas than my friends’ cars – what was I thinking? (BTW – I still have the fuel ration book for the car. Packrat!)
Fashion (Non)Sense
In one particularly spectacular bout of “dare to be different”, I bought (and wore!) a pair of white “brothel creepers”. I have no memory of what my friends were wearing at the time or what the fashions were, but white brothel creepers were so far “out there” that I got rid of them before I wore them out – almost a crime at that time and place.
As I look back, I wonder if I was cutting my nose off to spite my face – although in my case, cutting my nose off might have done my face a favour. Certainly I’ve been accused of having my own personal self-destruct button more than once.
More Recently
These days, I realize that sometimes I deliberately set out to be different. For example, I wear shorts almost year round, despite living in “the frozen north” (although this might have more to do with how hot most buildings are kept and how intolerant I am to heat). I sleep out in a tent when the Cub Scout pack I volunteer with sleeps in cabins (although that might have more to do with the desire to get a quiet night’s sleep!) I persist in using many hand tools when most would use power tools. Mrs. H. and I both prefer not to have a dishwasher or a tumble dryer.
And unlike many of my peers, I’m planning a new career at a time in my life when perhaps I should be planning retirement. I’m not sure if “playwright and humourist” is an achievable goal for me, but I’m doing my best to keep my hand off that self-destruct button by trying to believe what my family and friends believe – that I have the potential to be successful at it.
If ever there was a time in my life where being different was an asset, it’s now. The world doesn’t need “just another writer”, so I need to practise transferring my “different but the same” persona to the written word.
Time will tell if I succeed.
Your Turn
Do you try to conform? Do you try to be different? How successful are you? How would your life so far have been different if you’d tried the opposite tack? Let me know by leaving a comment.