One in a Million

A few days ago I picked this picture for a group writing prompt exercise. When I saw it, I immediately recalled a couple of hours I spent walking around that very beach on South Georgia Island ten years ago. I expected to write about the haunting din of penguin trumpeting, the smell of slimy guano, and the incredible sensation of being one of only a few dozen humans among a hundred thousand denizens of the Shanghai of penguindom.

Not surprisingly, when I looked more closely at the picture and began to write, a different story came out:

Writing About Our Differences

Who hasn’t felt “different” at some time or other? For much of my life I thought I was the “different” one, the one who didn’t fit in. As time has passed, and especially as I’ve become hooked on reading memoir and teaching hundreds of people to write their own, I’ve discovered that this feeling is widespread, if not quite universal, and that it is not inherently bad.

I felt different from the day I began first grade and realized that all the other children knew somebody. In fact, most of them knew at least half the class. I had just moved to town and didn’t know a soul. I felt like I’d been dumped on a different planet. They played with each other at recess. Not only did I not know any of them, I had grown up in a neighborhood lacking other children and had no idea how to play with other kids, so I stood on the sidelines, watching and trying to figure out how recess worked. The differences continued to compound until in high school I became the 1960s equivalent of a Geek Girl. Ultimately I realized that these differences became the quirks that make me Me.