Weird Does Not Apply

Well, I survived day 1 of boot camp. Now it was time to return to home base and make my daily ritual phone calls to Ariana and Roma (who forgot about the 3-hour time distance and called me while I was still in class).

Roma had called with the news of an escaped murderer in our town and for me to tell Ariana to be careful.

I had realized that it's been 3 days since I read a newspaper or heard the news. And you know what, that felt kind of nice.

Then I called Ariana. Yes, she already knew about the escaped murderer. She wasn't too much concerned about crossing paths with him, even though he was a relative of one of her former classmates who lived not even a mile up the road many years ago.

In addition to talk about escaped murderers lurking in our sleepy town, I extolled the virtues of Arizona and the people that I met, particularly in Cave Creek. People were incredibly kind and friendly. Even the drivers were sane and respected the 4-way stop signs and, for the most part, the speeding limits.

Here I was "normal." I wasn't weird. Nobody thought I had a character defect for being a middle-aged woman sporting a large tattoo on her forearm. I could be myself without people reacting as though I was a stuck-up snob because I was articulate and could easily use several 3-syllable words in one sentence.

(However, my quirky sense of humor did not seem to pack the same punch that it does back home. But hey! I'm not complaining.)

After living nearly my entire life in a place where people often considered me weird, odd, or what have you, that was kind of refreshing. As proud as I am about my uniqueness, being labeled as weird gets rather old and stale after awhile.

After hearing all this, Ariana said that she wanted to move to Arizona also. Now to convince the rest of the family.