Post #12 of 40

Giving Up Conformity

Please know that I do not try to embarrass Tom; it comes naturally.

Just last Sunday, I slipped into his pew after teaching church school. We shared the Book of Common Prayer and the Hymnal. When it came time to sight read the alto part of an unfamiliar hymn, I struggled. I touched the flashlight icon on my phone and lit up the page. Voila! I could see the notes and words clearly, which increased the likelihood that I would sing the right note and word at the right time. If anyone saw my phone flashlight, would they judge me? And, did I care? Nope. But, I realized it bothered Tom.

I don’t remember the exact moment Tom said to me, “You don’t have to cultivate your crazy!” I was probably dancing in the kitchen, plotting an innocent prank, speaking in some crazy voice, or pulling items out of the trash or recycling for a project.

I come from a line of unconventional people, perhaps even an eccentric or two - people who weren’t necessarily worried about what others thought. I come from world travelers, dreamers, list makers, and people who set crazy goals…and then achieve them. My people include a stutterer, poor farmers, factory workers, a person with a limb difference, a newspaper owner, a judge, a philatelist, a diesel mechanic who taught other mechanics from around the world, a pilot, an accountant, and homemakers.

My maternal grandfather, Murray, perhaps the most eccentric person I have ever known, overcame hardships that might have stifled the goals of the rest of us. Murray was left in Nashville as a young teen after his step-mother had died. My grandfather’s own mother died from the Flu in 1918 along with her newborn daughter. Murray was more or less taken in by the Zibart family, Jewish bookstore owners, where he first sold newspapers on the corner in front of the downtown store. Later, he worked inside the store, eventually becoming the manager of the records department and having a lucrative stamp and coin business on the side. He was known as the stamp man and the coin man and encouraged many a collector. In the late 1960s, he and my grandmother bought the Zibart’s Bookstore in Madison, Tennessee and owned it until they retired in 1985.

In the fall of 1937, Murray boarded a banana boat in Nashville and sailed down the river, to the Gulf of Mexico to South America - just for the adventure! He took a boat back to New Orleans and made his way to Nashville by land. This story has been handed down and talked about since I was a child. When my mother got interested in genealogy a few years ago, she started digging into online information as well as paper files and scrapbooks left behind. She found a ship manifest from his return trip and postcards from Murray to his wife. She also found a hilarious telegram from one of the Zibart brothers that included the humor and vocabulary of a well-read man. Had SNL been around, this Zibart would have been in that writing room.

Murray enjoyed telling stories and sharing his memories. He said he joined the cavalry at the age of 14 and was asked to leave when they figured out how young he was. I’m not sure any of us believed him until a photo turned up of a young teen Murray in uniform on a horse. He told us how, as a toddler, he sat on Buffalo Bill’s lap, and we doubted him until a photo showed up.

We also heard that his grandfather failed to identify members of the Jesse James gang who were accused of robbing the train he had been on. Was my great-grandfather being truthful, or did he fear for his own life and claim a lack of recognition? Of course, we wondered if that was true, until the days of the Internet when we found news stories about the train robbery and subsequent trial.

When stories of the past were exhausted, Murray would invent exaggerations for his granddaughters’ entertainment. He made a claim that he owned the biggest scissors in the world, and my six-year-old self would smile with twinkly eyes wondering what would happen next — every time. Slowly, he would take the tailor’s scissors off the top of the maple hutch, dramatically revealing each millimeter of the length of the blades, and then he would trim his pinky fingernail. I giggled at this demonstration more than once. I now have those scissors, and they still make me smile.

David Weeks was one of the first people to really study eccentric people. Weeks interviewed over a thousand people who self-identified as “eccentric.” In his extensive study, he found that eccentric people are often creative, only or oldest children, bad spellers, non-competitive (i.e. not in need of societal approval), aware of their difference from childhood, and often picky or unusual eaters.

Had Murray read this study, I think he would have agreed that he was eccentric. The rest of my family probably wouldn’t fit as neatly into that category. My grandmother Elaine didn’t tell wild stories or jump on banana boats, but she was PTA president, ran a bookstore, raised two great kids, sewed, made hats, crocheted, traveled around the world, canned and so much more — while having one hand. She didn’t let circumstances or strangers’ looks slow her down.

I think about my dad who grew up in poverty who wanted more than anything to fly airplanes, and he did — for 60 years. He put an airplane on his Christmas list every year as an adult when Janet and I were making our lists. He would say to us, “You can put anything on your list.” At the end of his life, he owned two airplanes, one of which he had built with a high school friend of mine.

My mother quit college when she married, in order to support my dad as he finished college. When I was eleven, and she was thinking about going back to college, I told her to do it! Not that she needed my encouragement, but she did get her degree and her CPA license and worked for justice in school systems and cities. If you stole from schools or cities in Tennessee in the 1980s or 1990s, she caught you.

My sister knew she wanted to be a doctor when she ten. In fact, in her sixth grade autobiography, she said, “I want to be the first woman doctor.” We had no doctors in our family, but she put her stake in the ground early and became a pediatrician.

I admire the courage that members of my family have shown. Each one of them added cobblestones to the road where I can walk and not be too worried about others’ opinions. I can sing and dance in my home. I can move to Abu Dhabi for a year (a story for another day) or yell out the car window complimenting a gardener on her colorful zinnias. If these are the wildest things I am doing, maybe I DO need to cultivate my crazy.

One time Tom said to me, “You know you’re two standard deviations from normal, don’t you?” I love a mathematician who is good with words! And, he loves me, too, even if I am half crazy.

I am happy to give up conformity if it means a more joy-filled, joy-giving, adventurous life.

And, in the meantime, I will get out my phone’s flashlight when needed — even in church.