A recent comment sent me on a bunny trail of thought that I just had to share with everyone here.  Because I’m a giver!  (Read that last sentence with cheesy self-mocking smirk, please…)

What, exactly, is “normal?”  As a parent I find myself constantly asking if my children’s development is “normal”, and what I’ve also discovered through parenthood is that the spectrum of what is considered “normal” is almost unbelievably broad.  A normal child may be rolling and scooting at three or four months, or six months, they may crawl at six months or wait to start crawling until after they start walking, they may pull up and “cruise” at nine months or twelve months, they may way ten pounds or twenty, they may babble or be almost completely nonverbal…  they may be any number of variations and still be totally “normal”, because “normal” in that sense simply means healthy development.

But when we talk about what is normal or natural when it comes to sexuality, we almost always mean “average”.  How boring would life be if everyone adhered to averages?  How little would we grow?  What is normal for me and normal for my husband doesn’t always match up (I mean in the bedroom and far beyond when I say that) and I ENJOY that fact, because the friction of being unequally paired forces both of us to grow.  If we were identical, we’d fall into a rut and it would take an act of God to move us.  So not being average is good- even though I think we’re both normal.

Is it normal for a woman to want children, to want to keep house, to want to wear pumps and pearls and make a mean roast?  Sure, but it’s also normal for a woman to be a little weirded out by infants, to not know how to relate to children, to be hopeless in the kitchen but great at making bookshelves.  Either of those fictitious women can be considered normal (albeit not average) and neither one of them has to be gay or straight just because of stereotypes, either.

Gather a hundred people in a room, and just look at them.  Some are tall, some are short- they come in all skin tones- they come with curly and straight hair- they come with dyed and natural hair- they come with tattoos, they come with clean skin, they come in all weights, they come in all styles of sexuality…  Some have babies on their laps, some have designer handbags, some have bluetooth headsets and some can’t figure out how to work their GPS.  And what is normal?  Well, all of it is.  Not a bit of it is totally average, as who could really average out humanity?

Yet we are all still in this together.  And we need our differences, we have to have them!  We need to learn from each other and bear with each other and embrace all which makes us separate and makes us equal.

One thing we don’t need?  Normal.