Self-Talking-essay

Not unlike most high school seniors I had become vividly aware that my particular high school was just down right “crazy.” This conclusion came on the not-particularly-momentous occasion of me being late to class and walking down the empty halls. A woman ahead of me was talking animatedly about a student that had apparently gained her admiration. “He’s just such a sweet boy and so good to!” I looked up…only to find her talking to herself. I heard loud swearing as I passed a classroom where our beloved and ancient substitute stood screaming at the terrified freshmen about World War II. Yet it was not just this occasion but many others that led to my conclusion. Memories of the class cowering as our physics teacher engaged in an air-gun war over our heads. Watching the video screen as we zoomed a little remote car down the halls….only to see it crash into what inevitably was the superintendent’s shiny shoes. That time when the class valedictorian almost held a protest in the gym. And our english teacher jumping ten feet every morning as the door was banged open and the shout “GOOOOOD MORNING!” rang down the halls.
Now that I look back on all those proofs that my high school was “crazy,” it almost makes me a little nostalgic. In fact, perhaps it is the very appeal of these behaviors that prove they are not normal-for the same reason that a practical joke appeals to those looking for a laugh. However, nobody finds it appealing when someone is molested or murdered. This demonstrates that the breaking of particular social norms is less punishable when they are informal norms, otherwise known as folkways. Breaking folkways is only mildly punished, or sanctioned, more so by other’s reactions, then by the law itself. I myself have engaged in the breaking of folkways.
I was leaning against the doorframe that separates our kitchen from the entry way. Unsatisfied. I had just engaged in brief conversation during the course of which I had the intense feeling of being looked upon with the surreptitious disdain and condescending superiority. I concluded that my social skills needed work and lost no time in working on them. I rewound the conversation in my head and was going over my responses word by word, rewording, adjusting pauses, tone and body language.
Iwas entirely engaged in this editing process when my brother walked in. He glanced in the kitchen, curious. “Who’s here?”
“Oh, um nobody.” I looked up sheepishly, mortified.
Grin. “You were talking to yourself weren’t you?”
I decided to take the plunge and launched into a lengthy explanation of why I was entitled to touch up my social skills after an unsatisfactory conversation, knowing that this talking-to-myself habit would be brought up in front of Mom and Dad. So I did the only thing I could…laughed and hoped to God I could live it down.
I think that this particular breaking of a social norm, is unique in that my brother’s reaction did not try to explain it away. He witnessed me going through the stage where I put various food products on my face claiming that it was a “facial,” and that time I decided to glue “gems” to my forehead or when I randomly started catapulting food at my (most likely scarred for life) younger sister. He has probably been convinced that I was hatched on some extra-terrestrial rock, since the age of two. Therefore, no explanation was necessary.

Socially, this shows how my brother is used to these normative clashes. What our society defines as normal behavior in school or at home, institutionalized norms, is rarely challenged. Because of societal expectations it is easy to become ethnocentric. Simply put, this is the judging of other cultures by one’s own cultural norms. Perhaps in some cultures it is normal to talk to oneself…some psychologists call this self-talking and claim that it aids learning. However, this is not a social norm in the society in which I grew up-made clear by my use of it as proof that my high school was “crazy” as well as my brother’s indication that talking to myself was funny and clearly not normal. Internalizing Newman’s discussion on what is considered “normal” has given me a broader perspective on just how much society can limit an individual’s world view with these norms. Yet it is the norms that hold that society together…even with the occasional individual that “self-talks.”

Yours truly,
Butterfly girl