Kermit

Day: One Hundred and Sixty Seven

Photo taken on Saturday, January 15, 2011 while I was volunteering at the mile 5 water station for the Blue Point Brewery 10 Mile Run in Patchogue, NY at 950am.

A fellow St. Anthony’s alumna posted a status message yesterday that at first I took personally but then I just shrugged it off thinking she doesn’t know what she’s missing. She is entitled to her opinion and I respect it but it made me pause and take a look at myself regardless. She wrote:

“Can someone please explain to me the stupid animal hats adults are wearing? If you’re over the age of 12 you just look like an idiot.”

I responded to the status message with: I’m an idiot then.

 And I like being an idiot.

I am who I am, and I have prided myself on that fact since I was a youngster. I have always marched to the beat of my own drummer (hell I was a drummer) no matter what type of flak I caught for it. Pepsi sneakers in the fifth grade, a silk button down shirt with a map of the world on it in seventh grade, a rather large Hawaiian shirt collection (before the trend set in) in sophomore year of high school, and then in college talking t-shirts became a part of my wardrobe before celebrities thought they were cool. Now as an adult, stupid animal hats.

I know I look stupid. I know everyone on my commuter train has snuck a glance at my headgear and I don’t really care what their thoughts are about it either. Whether they think I look like a goof or that I want attention, it is not going to phase me in the least. I like my frog hat with its bulging eyes sticking out from my noggin and the tongue hanging above my eyes; I think it’s silly and that’s why I wear it.

Apparently there are unspoken rules about growing older and you know what? I’m not ever going to follow them and there’s not a thing you can do to convince me otherwise. Even when I have kids, I’ll be embarrassing them when they’re in high school and I’m off to the grocery store in my pajama pants and a matching beanie. We won’t even discuss the horror on their faces when I traipse out the door one Saturday in full cosplay as I head toward the Javits Center for the New York Anime Festival. Do I look outlandish all the time? Of course not! But you can keep your stuffy wardrobe, I like my Converse sneakers with this pant suit thank-you-very-much.

I have come so far since my adolescence, shedding that self-conscious skin and gaining a sense of humor that makes life’s obstacles bearable. Still to this day people make snap judgments based on my appearance but if they took the time to actually sit and have a conversation with me they would learn that there is definitely more to me than my hat. A lot more. There is no law saying I have to squash that inner child within me and stop enjoying the one life I get to live. If I want to spend it being a womanchild then more power to me. I know what I’m about and at least I’m comfortable enough in my own skin to walk out of the house wearing an animal on my head.

Society has made some of us too scared to express ourselves so instead we hide behind what everyone else is doing without a single original thought in our heads. People should want to switch it up, create their own style, and wear it proudly.

Today I am not alone with my frog hat, a fellow volunteer, Freddie, is also donning an animal hat with matching gloves! Now that’s what I’m talking about!