Different

The Shyest Time - The Apartments (mp3)
Darwin Was a Baptist - Ninja Gun (mp3)

Saturday morning found my wife and youngest downtown at Panera munching on bagels and scarfing down coffee. The downtown restaurants and eateries are fascinating, sociologically speaking, because they increase the sense of Forrest Gump's box of chocolates: you never know what you're gonna get walking into Panera at 9:20 a.m. on a Saturday morning.

A few pre-churchgoers. Lots of runners and bikers, exercising types. One dude had on this Axl Rose bandanna on his head, some curly reddish blonde hair, and carried himself with a level of confidence comparable with Pepe Le Pew, which is to say "supremely pleased with himself." He was wearing a red wife-beater that said "Citadel Marines" on it, and the shirt gave clear exposure to both his "guns" as well as the chest upon which a woman could eat dinner with a steak knife and evince nary a wince from the man. (I mock, but I mock with muscular jealousy and mousy respect.)

Plenty of other types milled and munched around my little middle-class triumvirate, but one family stood out. More specifically, the daughter portion of one family stood out.

The female in question stood a gangly 5'6", had medium brown stringy hair, a mildly acne-ridden face, and glasses. Had she been dressed normally, most people wouldn't have noticed her, and the ones who did would have thought, "awwwwwkward!"

Her outfit took her over the top. The closest I can come to explaining the overall fashion feel she gave off was to say the words, "Desperately Seeking Susan." The Madonna period where she just wore layers of shit, and had trinkets and what-nots dangling and hanging and wrapped all over everywhere? Well, this girl had that look. She had on black leggings with no socks that fell into teal Crocs. She had some kind of plastic pink bangle on one leg. She had these little tin (or plastic?) animals she'd pinned to her shirt in random places. She had another couple of odd bangles on one wrist.

And then, the coup de grace: she wore what resembled a bonnet on her head. A teensy bonnet (unlike the version at left), but a bonnet nonetheless. White and red checkerboard mini-bonnet from ear to ear.

Are you understanding this? A teenage girl was wearing a red-and-white checkerboarded fucking bonnet!

Everyone looked at her. It was one of those where you look at her, and then you look around at everyone else to see who else is seeing what you're seeing, to make sure you're not making more of it than it's due.

It reminded me of that scene in the Steve Martin movie Roxanne, where he's playing a modern-day Cyrano de Bergerac, and the moronic yet hot Slider from Top Gun finally meets him and can't stop staring or commentating about the size of Charlie's proboscis. Or a time when I was at an outlet mall with my wife several years ago, and the most poorly put-together cross-dresser (or, perhaps sadder, transvestite) I've ever encountered came strolling in. The dude reminded me of Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs. That's how unfeminine he looked. Or she. Whatevs.

We know it's rude to stare, and we know we shouldn't, but sometimes we do anyway.

But to my point.

Much of our society has glamorized the notion of being different. And we glamorize it with the word "non-conformity." Pixar has made buckets of money mining the depths of the Conformity v. Non-Conformity battle lately with Ratatouille and Wall-E and Up. In fact, a huge percentage of comedies and inspirational movies -- and particularly animated films -- base themselves on this dichotomy. The herd versus the one who dares to be different. A Bug's Life. Bee Movie. Mulan. Little Mermaid. Happy Feet. In fact, it would be one helluva drinking game to start going through the names of movies where the non-conformist is the protagonist and hero. (Or, for you nerdy literary types, I'm sure you could do it with books... YAWNNNNN...)

In theory, we love the non-conformist. We write stories about her. We craft entire movies around him.

In practice, however, when we actually encounter an honest-to-God living, breathing non-conformist, we stare. We gawk. We laugh quietly to ourselves or loudly with our conforming friends. Or maybe we couch our amusement in "concern," because there must be something mentally deficient in a teenage girl wearing that outfit out in public. Why would she do that? Is she suicidal? Or maybe just below the Moron level of IQ?

In practice, non-conformity scares us. And it should. True non-conformists are difficult to understand.

I'm not talking goth kids, or sk8er boys, or emo girls, or tree-huggers or any of these labels. If there's enough of your type for it to have earned a label, then you're really not doing anything all that frakkin' unique, mmkay? True non-conformists break all the molds, usually to the point that they really don't make much sense to anyone except maybe, possibly, to themselves.

Enter my final movie reference of the day: Cool Hand Luke, one of the greatest movies of alllll time. Luke was a true non-conformist. He's contradictory and confusing. He earns the adulation of others and then spurns it. One could argue Luke can't even explain himself, understand himself. He almost seems guided by forces beyond his own comprehension, because he seems to get how to go along and get along, and he almost seems to want to... but he just... can't.

As is often the case, we glamorize a concept only to simplify it and dumb it down to suit our conveniences. Choosing "the road less traveled" isn't a punch line, and it isn't a fashion statement. It's a nasty, difficult and confusing way to live, and the ones who are doing it the most sincerely are the least likely to be capable of explaining it to you.

And with that, I raise a glass to non-conformity. And bonnets!

"The Shyest Time" comes from the soundtrack to Some Kind of Wonderful, a 1985 John Hughes movie that desperately wants to be about non-conformity and hits the mark as often as it misses. And either way, it has Lea Thompson and Mary Stuart Masterson, both of whom were ridonkulously hot, according to some nerdy teenagers I knew back then. Both songs can be found on iTunes or Amazon.com, and if they can't, call me and we'll bum rush those companies together!