Streak 30 & A Weird Little Story

Herb’s Blog, Herbdate 22579 – 892

Here’s the haps:

Thanks again for all of your support and comments. I really enjoy that.

Several people noticed the featured image on the memes pages:

I dumbed it down for loading purposes but attached above are the links to the original Unsplash photo by Derrick McKinney. I found the actual doormat by searching The Google by the phrase that was written on it although I doubt I’ll buy it. But I don’t know. Stranger things have happened. I just asked Mrs. Herb and showed it to her and she likes it, so who knows? If we do get it I will show you a picture of it.

Weird has always been used in association with me. This sounds humorous on the surface and it is…now. When I was a teenager there was a lot of fighting and carrying on, most frequently between some of the young people who were related but it spilled over into other areas, as well. One time our whole youth group was called together and everybody could explain their feelings about others. Looking back across the last forty-five or so years gone by I don’t know if I agree with the approach now but at the time it seemed like the thing that needed to happen. Each of us had to stand in front of the others and tell what we had against any or all of the others.

I didn’t have anything against any of them. I had nothing to say when it was my turn. I listened to them discuss their feelings about each other, sometimes aghast and sometimes fascinated. Honestly, I think it may have done a lot to clear the air at the time with that group. But beyond all that teen angst and anger there was another theme. Every single one of them said, “Herbie, you’re a really nice guy. I don’t have anything against you, really, but you’re just so weird.”

At first, it upset me, of course, but since they all said virtually the same thing, I decided to go to the dictionary and see what it said. “…relating to the supernatural or strange or unconventional.” That actually made me feel a lot better. I mean, I knew what supernatural was. I had recently received the baptism of the Holy Ghost and that is as supernatural as a human being can come to. I had seen many mighty works of God already. Supernatural sounded cool to me. I guessed that they were jealous. Strange? Unconventional? Oh, yeah. I had no intention or desire to be like everybody else. Especially my peers. My good friends were always the outcasts and oddballs, anyway. I decided then that I would embrace my weirdness and wear it as a badge. Sure, there were bumps in the road and it didn’t happen all at once but after that incident, I had a kind of pride inside of me. Which is, of course, a very weird reaction to such a thing.