“I’m so different and unusual”

This is one of those things that doesn’t need to be said. When people write in their descriptions of themselves on their ‘About’ pages for Facebook or something, “I’m really wacky and random,” I just don’t believe them.

If you really were so unusual and wacky and different and cool and funny, surely it wouldn’t need to be said? It’s not as though I’d be chatting away to you, thinking how normal you are, and then you’d suddenly say to me, “Omygoodness, I’m really wacky,” and I’d suddenly think, ‘O yes, yes you are. Now that you’ve said it I can see it.’ If you have to point it out, it’s not actually that noticeable, so it’s not really true.

I went to university with a girl who I got on really well with. We stayed in touch a little afterwards. I moved to a different university to start a new course after one year, she left to go and live with a guy she met on the internet. I got a friend request from her on one of these social networking sites, it was before Facebook was really big so I don’t know what site it was. I went on her page….

Awfulness. There was a photo of her doing slightly shocked eyes and jazz hands with a bit of a mad hairstyle and her description of herself went something like this:

“I love making jewellery, I live in Ireland with the best boyfriend in the world, I have the best friends ever, I’m totally wacky and I love being quirky. Take me or leave me!”

Now, this is not only annoying in the way that I have already explained. It is annoying on two more levels. One is that she is the furthest thing from ‘wacky’ I could describe when I knew her. She was just down to earth and normal. A little bit mumsy, if anything. She wore a sturdy but unfashionable backpack and long, heavy, war-time-ish skirts. She was lovely. I loved killing a few hours in the cafe chatting to her. I never noticed how she looked really. And then I got this silly friend request about how ‘craaaaazy’ she is and I thought about her and thought how definitely un-craaaaazy she is. And I just didn’t believe her. I didn’t believe her description of herself and I didn’t really want to be friends with her anymore.

It reminded me of going to secondary school and getting all excited because I’d moved up a year so there were younger ones to boss around. You know, you suddenly get really full of yourself and think you’re extremely cool and everyone else is thinking about how irritating you are.

It’s like Danda says, “If you have to try for even one second to be cool, you ain’t cool.”

The second reason this statement is annoying is this whole ‘best in the world’ thing. This is so silly. Birthday cards that say, ‘To the best sister in the world,’ for example, are ridiculous. How can anyone possibly know that? Unless they have had every sister in the entire world and concluded this one to be the best. Yes, they might be great and kind and lovely but ‘the best in the world’? Did they donate a kidney? Did they die trying to rescue you from a treacherous river? Did they carry you single-handedly across a desert to save you from thirst? Did they? Unless you know what every sister in the world has ever done done for their sibling, it’s a statement you can’t make. People say it on Facebook when it’s Valentine’s or something. So-and-so has got the ‘best girl/boyfriend in the world.’ As though we’re all sitting there going, ‘O well, I thought my boy/girlfriend was amazing but now I realise that person’s actually is. I’m so jealous. I only have the second best boy/girlfriend ever.’