Today, without mentioning names, I ran into several quirky people. In fact, when I think of it, most people I know are quirky in one way or another. I can remember as a child taking piano lessons from a teacher that always smelled of bananas. Of course some religious people are quirky. They can be greatly exercised about matters that are not even contemplated by others. I have known store clerks that one gingerly did business with, the customer not wanting to get berated for having the temerity of trying to buy something at the store. I have known teachers in advanced university programs whose minds in some particular areas were as closed as any person’s living or dead. I have kinships that I have grown to cherish because of their peculiar quirkiness witnessed from the intimate perch of family relations. Yes, I have found it far better to assume that everyone I meet is going to be quirky in one way or another. In fact, it can be a source of unease to run across a person who in some vaguely disturbing way is striving to be too conventionally uniform. A politically correct emphasis now is to “affirm diversity.” That’s odd and peculiar in a way—to imagine that diversity does not grow on its own but must be cultivated. On the contrary, it is uniformity that requires constant cultivation and fussiness—even to the fanatical devising of tons of laws and codes. So in the end, excessive tidiness shows itself as just another obdurate instance of quirkiness all decked out in a business suit.
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