SQUARE PEGS
The Case for the Middle of the Road

I have longed to be eccentric. In my more than a half century on the earth, I have watched exotic creatures, alleged intellectuals and affected artists be excused for every faux pas, neglected duty and profoundly insensitive behaviour. It was because they were so different, no one knew what to do about it.  Far from acceptance, fear played a mighty part in the tolerance of the eccentric. Since no one really understood the person, was there any assurance that censure would not result in an even more peculiar reaction?

I encountered my first eccentric when I was in the ninth grade.  A pompous and aggressive young woman whose compulsion was to sketch shoes with flair,  managed to miss every Phys. Ed. class, withdraw from Mathematics and merely flash the capped teeth, her father, a dentist,  had built for her. She whiled away the hours sketching shoes. Did she become a shoe designer? No. She apparently shoplifted a lot of shoes and eventually was caught. Eccentric?

The next group of eccentrics I met was in university. I don’t mean real eccentrics, I mean apprentice eccentrics. They took drama, music and other courses that put them in touch with journeyman eccentrics they could emulate. They talked with a flourish and had all read Herman Hesse, Russian poets and seen obscure foreign movies where no one actually said anything but stared at each other in a lobotomized archetypal “cat staring at the wall” way.  They dabbled in serious music and would always tell you that they liked music like “Return to Forever” by Chick Corea. They could never name actual songs, just as they could not cite which Yvgeny Yevtushenko poem they fancied.  Some of them owned lizards, and the most profoundly weird one of this group had a leather clad prosthetic hand. The women at my school were entranced by this man and would ask “Don’t  you find him pirate-like?” I developed a particular distaste for the eccentric esthetic.

Later in life I found myself working with opera stars, dancers, famous musicians, and visual artists. I recall one man wearing a large wool hat with a rhinestone encrusted brooch holding it together.  I was abruptly interrupted in my office by a man with a rotating toupee demanding some kind of fixative.   Often the oddities of these people was accentuated by a yen for and participation in various forms of chemical or liquid merriment, One impoverished dress designer would assess expensive cars, get shaken, not stireed  and on occasion hurled himself at the autos of the elite  and negotiate quiet out of court settlements.   One of my most unsettling connections with the alternate universe of the eccentric was working with a notably “has beenish” star of the fifties. She worked in a small regional production of Guys and Dolls and insisted on having an already snug costume made smaller, and then smaller again. The effect was similar to mummy wrapping, except that this person would not be quiet or play dead. In the end her costume was ridiculed in the press and she peppered the theatre dressing room with fluorid langage and many tossed articles.  I myself was narrowly missed by a bottle of Silent Sam, and did have a splattering of gin and tonic on my suit.

In the end, I suppose we need characters to make us appreciate what is good, strong and stable in our lives. I have respect for someone who takes the road less travelled and develops a persona of interest.  I don’t mind the “confetti” and humour of the arcane and unusual, but I could use a little less of it. We have come to accept the outrageous without question. There is value in the  rarity of  beauty, intellect and talent, but less so  the vacuous and sensational without substance. Let’s strive for more true quality and less alleged brilliance.