Individual Abnormal

[Author's Note: What's this?! I finally managed to think of a response for Curious incident about a week or so after it was due?? Better late than never I guess. I had something else in progress before this actually, and that was going to be my project, but it was getting nowhere, so I finally decided to start over from scratch. I had to use a lot of near rhymes because I couldn't think of a proper rhyme that made sense in some places, and the near rhyme just sounded better in others. But yeah. This is a poem about how ironic it is that Christopher isn't well accepted in society because he's so 'weird' when the reality is, everyone is weird when you think about it. I mean, come on, if it's 'normal' to carry around a rabbit's foot or some other 'lucky' memento for superstitious reasons, but it's not okay for someone to have a superstition about the number of a color of cars that they pass on the way to school? And whatever happened to 'dare to be different'? Christopher may be the one person in the whole world who is completely honest, a trait that is seen as IDEAL, but people think this 'ideal trait' makes him a freak. He's got the math and science skills to become a great scientist or something, but he might not become one just because he can't read people expressions or tell a lie. People can't see past his 'condition' enough to see that at the end of the day, Christopher is a lot more like a normal person than anyone would admit. He just does stuff his own way. And that's what this poem is about.]

It is a bitter irony
That this, our society
That promotes individuality
Will not accept the different me.

“Dare to be different!” they all say
But when I do things my own way
The difference is like night and day
“Be like us, or you will pay.”

The price is real, and the cost high
And I can’t understand why
Most opportunities pass by
The life of one who can not lie.

Why would you ask me how I feel
If you want an answer that’s not real?
I cannot grasp a lie’s appeal,
So why is lying so ideal?

It’s fine to wear peculiar clothes
And wear jewelery through your nose.
It’s fine to put on silly shows
When a better time could have been chose.

But I can’t have a favorite color
Without being jeered at by another.
Everyone else can dream fame and flutter
But when I dream I’m called a nutter.

Liking math makes me a geek,
But it will help me find the life I seek
My superstition makes me a freak
Yet it’s fine to carry rabbits’ feet.

Of skills to offer, I have many.
Of lies I’ve told, I haven’t any.
But when they look, all people see,
Is my condition hanging over me.

We’re so alike, but they only see
What makes them more normal than me.