Flying with the Addams Family

Hi blog. Long time no type.

I was in San Francisco for the weekend and it was the most wonderful, relaxing get away ever. I got to run my favorite trail ever (the Dipsea in Muir Woods), shop, wander around the city, hang out in the woods, climb on old bath-house ruins, take pictures of mossy trees and piss off an old Chinese guy. Now THAT's a great trip!

On the flight home, I ended up sitting next to this couple in their early 20's - they were... err.... special. They were clearly heavy into the goth thing, the girl had jet black dreadlocks with some streaks of red, wearing all black, some random chains and a strange fanny pack (that I assume held a dead bat). The guy was similarly dressed and had piercings all over his face, ears and I'm sure other places - ew. (and was rather doughy - I always think of goth/emo kids as being too misunderstood to eat. Apparently that wasn't a problem for him)

So when I fly, I'm kind of an A-hole. I don't want to talk to ANYone. Don't look at me, don't make eye contact, don't strike up a chatty conversation about the weather, just. don't. Sorry middle aged aunty from Oklahoma. When I fly, it's me and the clouds.

So because of my very strict no-being-friendly rules, I didn't bother to say hello to the Addams family couple. But then I overheard the girl lean into her boyfriend and say "they're all staring at us" and I felt kind of bad.

But I got over it five seconds later.

What the heck dark and scary couple?!?! Isn't that WHY you dress like that? For attention? So that you can telegraph to the world how dark and deep your feeeeelings are - so dark in fact that you can only wear black clothing? Using that logic, the entire island of Manhattan must also have very dark and deep feeeeeeeeelings.

If you're going to make the choice to pierce the skin around your eye with 20 small metal studs, then you kind of have to expect someone to look at you sideways. Because it's not something that you see very often. (Because it's dumb) But clearly when you went to the Claire's counter in the mall and asked the teenager working the desk to turn your face into a sprinkler system for your tear ducts, you knew that wasn't a normal thing to do. And wasn't that the point? To be less 'normal'? To distance yourself from the idiots who shop at the gap and hold down jobs and have enough money to buy houses and cars....

Yes - I'm sure the idiots buying house in their gap chinos feel awfully bad about themselves when they see your stylin' choices.

So here's the thing. If you do something to intentionally make yourself stand out from the crowd, embrace it. Own it girl. Just don't be surprised when someone looks at you twice trying to figure out if that's a pincushion on your forehead.

But more importantly, realize that you are the one that made the choice to stand out and when you stand out, people stare. That's the point of standing out. So don't go making it their fault for staring.

And also - shower before you get on a long flight. You smelled like day old urine.