Norm Paper

Once upon a time there was a young boy who violated norms. Perhaps a bad introduction, but I have always wanted to start an essay this way and see what would happen. You see, it is a norm for me not to start an essay this way, so I decided to violate it. Who is this boy you may ask. Well, isn’t it obvious? It’s me. I have been violating norms since the day I was in a McDonald’s play-place, six years old and not a care in the world. Three little words are what set me off: “You are weird,” and I have been ever since. Why am I here being weird? Well, a long time ago my parents met each other, and . . . too far back, perhaps? Sorry, it isn’t something I can quite explain. You such as mention violating a norm and people go berserk. They shut you up and throw a tarp over your head; they tie you in a knot and hang you upside-down. Why do they do this? There is a fear of a word that you hear children repeating over and over again: “awkward.” Why is this word so scary? Maybe we’ll find out. A while ago I had the opportunity to go to an independent film festival. I decided that this time I would go all out and do my very best to violate as many folkway norms as I could. It was a film festival, so I wore lens-less 3D glasses throughout to see what people would do. I also planned on using one of my friends to violate a norm. Whenever I would get lost, I would scream out their name. I also chose, spontaneously, to lay on the floor in the middle of a huge room packed with people. The reason I did it at the time was mostly to just get attention. It wasn’t until later in the day that I decided that instead of getting attention, I would experiment on people’s reactions. I wanted to pick their brains and record expressions, some of which I was totally unprepared for. For the first, I knew people would ask questions. They would probably tell me none of the movies were in 3D. They might even ask me if I knew the lenses were missing. Facial expressions were to be expected, too. For the third violation, I expected people to turn their attention to me. I hoped to God that no police would be in the room. They would probably ruin my whole experience. My friend didn’t expect me to scream out their name, so I assumed they would be horribly embarrassed and red-faced. For the final violation, since it was so spot-on, I didn’t really know what reaction I would get. I expected my older brother to get mad at me, kick me in the side and tell me to get up, but that is unlike him. He usually just goes with my behavior—a key personality trait I have learned to love. I also felt people would do their best to walk as far around me as they could to avoid my gaze. Another aspect would be someone coming up and asking me if I was hurt or sick.

I’m going to spend the next three paragraphs on my various methods and their results beginning with the 3D glasses violation. It all started with a good quote from a very familiar name: Dr. Seuss. “Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.” I wanted to see who mattered, you see. Those who cared about my glasses didn’t matter much to me. And those who couldn’t care less that I was wearing them mattered a lot. At first, I thought no one would notice. I expected that most people thought they were real glasses, especially from a distance. They didn’t really know they were, in fact, 3D until they caught a glimpse of the side where in nice white letters it read “Real ‘D’ 3D Glasses.” Bold people who weren’t shy (Mostly teenagers) came up to me and asked me if they improve my vision. I would respond saying, “It makes everything come to life. I feel as if I could reach out and touch your face right now.” They would formally back away a couple of steps and find a reason to leave. A lot of adults gave me that sneer. “Oh, what a foolish, stupid, young man,” I am sure they were thinking. I could see it in their eyes. I won’t give out names, but their was one very famous speaker their who I had the pleasure to meet, and as a side norm violation, I decided to violate one of his. You see, I expected that since this person was so very popular amongst this concentration of people, he would expect me to know exactly who he was. Sure, I knew him, just like everyone else. I came up to the man, and with the sternest look, I said, “And you are?” His face turned red, and he looked at me with insult. I believe a lot of his expression, too, was partly my glasses’ fault, but still his pride was injured. “I am Mr. ------,“ he said with a crackled voice. This, by far, was my favorite reaction. People also asked me where I got my glasses so they could get one of their own for the movie. After leading them on a wild goose chase, I turned them around and said they didn’t really need the glasses and I was fooling with them. Hey, I wasn’t there to make friends. I was there to see movies and mess with people. Obviously they were mad, but understanding of a good joke.

This next one was hardest to do. I have embarrassed friends before. I’m the one who would go to the mall with them and ask (in their presence) complete strangers if they could tell me how to get to Sesame Street. I’m the one who sings loudly at weeklong campouts surrounded by strange people we didn’t know. The friends I went with would usually kick me in the shin, telling me to shut up. Once, they even tackled me down for singing the Barney theme song. Let’s just say, I have had a lot of experience and was good friends with the person I was about to turn into a celebrity (not saying they weren’t already). I did it in on more than one occasion. I’d look around, not seeing my friend, and after a big breath, I screamed their name as loud as I could. Naturally, the victim turned red and stomped their foot on the ground. Everything went quiet, like a gun had been fired. Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea, I thought. All attention was on me. The flaming I got afterward. The endless invisible spears people throw out of their eyes penetrated me by the thousands. Did I regret it? Hell no. I would do it a hundred times over. In fact, I plan on violating this norm again someday, especially if it weren’t for the children. A lot of them laughed at me, and repeated me, too. They would scream the same name, only not as loud. Parents turned on them quickly. Those poor kids, I am such a bad example . . .

The third violation was me lying on the ground. Now, this one was the one that actually surprised me. I expected people would come up and ask me if I were ok, so I naturally pulled out the schedule of the festival and acted like I was leisurely reading it. I was there for quite a while. I waved at a nearby concession-stand employee. He gave me a look of concern. I was then questioning whether or not something nasty had been spilt here before, but before I could get up, two men came to my left and three others to my right, one of them being my older brother. They all wanted to play along. All of them, one by one, got on the ground, laid on their backs, pulled out their schedules, and started reading them. Not one moment passed, and we were all introduced to each other. Still on the ground, we exchanged names and shook hands like normal people would, only, normal people aren’t rendered to the ground. Now, I did not ask them to do this. I have reason to believe my older brother had a lot to do with it, but we weren’t working together. I guess it is just how our minds work with one another. I was right about the whole circle idea. Let me explain, I expected people to walk around me as far as they could, and they did. They would literally go to the edge of the wall in a circle and back to the centermost part of the room just to get to the other side of the hall. Other people would be walking distracted by something, and then at the last moment they’d spot me and stop. They gave up all together and didn’t cross the room. Not until I got up did they begin their approach. I have no idea why they were so scared of me. I hope no woman wearing a dress thought I was a pervert. That is the last thing I wanted them to think.

In conclusion, I must say that I was in the middle of being uncomfortable and comfortable with doing it. I have had so much experience violating such norms, that it was easy for me to do. Not until I started Sociology class that I know that that was what I was doing. It was definitely fun to do. When I look back at these things, I almost view them as my lot in life. It’s what I do to entertain myself. This experience made me feel good, somewhat embarrassed, proud, and it made me aware, too. I am aware of these hidden rules people have in their minds. These rules are my favorite to break, if you ask me. I’d say that everyone is developed with this code in his or her mind. They cannot necessarily explain what they are or where they come from. All they know is that it is there just the same. What they do not know is that the people that surround them and the behavior they have observed from these people since they were small children has taught them these invisible laws. Even the people who violate these norms know and feel these rules, and that is why we feel nearly sick breaking them. I take the Dr. Seuss quote lightly, I must add. I do not necessarily say people who cared about my glasses didn’t matter. The reason why these people acted the way they did was because I was breaking their invisible rules. A lot of attention goes to rule breakers. Criminals go to jail, and even some are sentenced to death. People just freak when their rules are broken, and that is why I got the questions, the eye-spears, the insulted expressions. I am not entirely sure why those men joined me on the floor. Perhaps they saw how much fun I was having and wanted to participate as well. Perhaps they were trying to impress a girl, so they wanted to express that they could be as weird as me. The list goes on forever. Perhaps my brother had a lot to do with it. And screaming gets on people’s nerves. That explains all the eye spearing. The children confused me, though. I didn’t expect them to follow my example. They were, after all, very young and still developing. Perhaps what they saw me do they assumed was a social norm, so they wanted to partake as well. In a way with the screaming violation, I would say that I am looking at it in both a macro and microsociology view, macro being everyone eye-spearing me, and micro being my one friend, red as a tomato and steaming out the ears. I’d take it also that this is majorly an interactionist’s point of view. In all these I viewed how the invisible rules were created by people’s interactions with one another. My parent’s have always taught me about public behavior and how I best be on it if I am to escape punishment. I’d say, too, that parent’s have a lot of power to influence these invisible rules. Behaving in general is what they want children to do, and this public behavior turns into these norms everyone values so much. The endless practice of behaving well in public encodes itself so deep in us that they are hard to get rid of, and that is also where the different stage selves come from. In public, we want to behave, but in a more private environment, we could care less. That is why we are totally different people when we are home. All these observations I am making is what sociology is all about. It is my sociological perspective. I believe it is vital for everyone to have a sociological perspective, even if they are not sociologists. In the end, I do wish to violate more norms, and I plan to. It all depends on my timing and ideas.

Dream - 1-22-11

I regret to announce that my experiment failed. I do not think I was in control of any dreaming. I was just sleeping and interrupted. But, in any case, here is the dream I had last night:

I find myself in a courtyard made of tannish stone. Four walls on each side, slanting down into a pit of water like an upside-down, hollowed out pyramid. Four bridges from the four walls sprouted out to a center platform as big as life. It had four circular platforms budding out from a ring of stone. Plants and vines and waterfalls aligned everything. A ring of stone for every platform acted as somewhat of a roof. Large pillars held them up. I was with a crowd of people whom I did not know. They followed me as I examined large circular points of light like those found under a magnified glass. They burned large black spots upon the stone, yet its hellish heat did not hinder my flesh. Above me was a large ring of stone in-between the platform I stood upon and the vine-covered roof. A mechanical arm like those of a propping manikin used ages ago seized it. Before my friends was a lever too heavy to pull alone. As I stood upon the dot of light, they pulled this lever and the large ring of stone slammed around me like a fly swatter—yet I was not hurt, for I went through the whole which defined its center.

We went to the next platform and did the same thing, and the next, until we came upon the final platform. It was much unlike the rest. The others did not have a giant tiger statue, snarling, and preparing to pounce! One of the male followers came up to the statue as if he recognized it. A sudden voice like a god vibrated across the hollows!

“Return the sight you have stolen from me!” it cried, horrifically.

The man’s left eye gave way, and popped out of his head. A tangent of blood came out of his eye as he screamed for mercy. We had thought that death was to be here soon and claim his pray. Albeit, his bleeding stopped—his eye remained missing, sadly. They patched it with a piece of cloth; and now that each platform had been completed, a final stairway that led into the waters below came up to us. The water sunk into the recesses—and as did the water go did the sunlight, for everything went black.

We lit torches, and followed down the stair into the dark tunnel bellow. A door stood in our way, but it was unlocked and light. As we opened it, we came out into a large neighborhood. The houses we close together, but the one that drew our attention was none other than the giant black one beyond. It was the center of our sight, and the first thing we mostly saw. As we got closer, it got bigger—as we got closer, the other houses got smaller, until they disappeared completely. We entered there in; we all knew what was inside, for it was this that our goal was. We were meet by various people in fashionable dress of the Victorian style. What beautiful hats and dresses and voices, galore—except for the color . . . Everything was either gray, or black, and everyone wore masks. Everything was unfamiliar, but we had been there before and met the people.

HD is now Available =D

Wal-Mart Raid # 3 1-15-11

Wal-Mart Raid # 2 12-27-10

I Want A

I want a hat with fire on the side
A tangerine flutist and a breath-mint of pride.
I want a yodel that reached for the stars,
A masterful snail that raced, much like cars.

I want a mirror that reflects itself,
A magical, mystery, amazing bookshelf.
I want a horn as quite as a mouse,
A house as a car and a car as a house.

I want a crystal that emanates pie,
A short little man that can brush with the sky.
I want a camera that takes memories,
I want a glass that’s full as the seas.

I want a high-five I could not give away,
A golden trophy too big to display.
I want a broken down escalator with cars driving down it,
A guitar that is good enough to be called a bonnet.

I want a book I can read with my nose,
I want a daisy that smells like a rose.

That Morning

I felt my stomach twist into knots as the van rushed its way toward its destination. My eyes were red as tomatoes from staying up late the night prior; my head was a dizzy hurricane; and above all, I was unprepared for what was about to happen that morning. As we pulled into the parking lot, my fingers began to sweat. My legs went numb like they did not want to leave the car. I wish it was the day before so I could have a second chance, but as much as I wished there was nothing I could possibly do.

Some would say mathematics is the hardest subject, and some would say science, maybe even spelling—all of these, perhaps, but Spanish was mine. Over that school-year, I had developed some strange dyslexia for Spanish. I couldn’t conjugate verbs to save my grandmother, nor could I memorize any vocabulary. I was a hopeless mess. The words and the spelling, the accents and the grammar—all of it was jumbled disarray in my head. I do blame a lot of my unpreparedness to my lack of Spanish savvy; however, at the end of that year, I had developed into a diehard procrastinator. I had also lost a lot of interest in the Spanish language, and on many occasions said it was the stupidest language on earth.

It was cold in that classroom, or perhaps my fear was influencing me otherwise. It smelled like fresh coffee (my teacher obviously could never get enough). The resonance of pencils scratching on pallid paper surrounded me. No one else was shivering, and that is something I probably never understood. How was every other student managing this class better than I? And I could not help but wonder if anyone else was unprepared; yet, as much as it puzzled me, it was irrelevant.

The first thing I needed was a pencil. To my avail, I had none. I borrowed someone else’s, but snapped its tip at the first touch to paper. Hurriedly, I sharpened it in the corner of the room and returned accordingly to my desk. Reading through the text, I noticed questions one through five were effortless to answer—it was everything subsequent that made me hopeless. Over and over, I guessed through the whole test, but an obscure entity locked far into the deepest recesses of my mind was telling me I was doing well. Of course, I did not believe this. My face and ears were hot with anger and embarrassment; after all, none of these questions made sense to me as much did my haphazard confidence.

Before I knew it, the class had finished the exam. I, on the other hand, sat miserably on the third-to-last question. As much as the test was hard, none of it was compared to the essay. It required me to write, in Spanish, about my favorite Spanish word. I chose the word loco which means crazy pertaining to how crazy the test was. Something about the essay, regardless of its intimidation, struck me with refined buoyancy. Perhaps I did not do poorly after all.

The next two days were gruesome. I experienced one of the most nerve-wracking weekends of my life. I could not for the life of me stop thinking what my parents were going to think of my final grade. Though, as much as I was sure I failed, I was sincerely surprised to find out that I had made an 87 percent grade. I could not believe the report card I was reading. I felt that surely I made at the least a 20, but an 87? True, it made me feel good about myself, but I was still reminded of how legitimately unprepared I was that morning. Never do I want to experience anything similar to it, and that is what good came out of this experience—it showed me how painful it can be to be unprepared.