What is normal anyway?

Everyone assumes that their lives are normal. You assume that they way you were brought up was normal, whilst you are living your childhood anyway. I agree that some people come to the realisation at some point, that their childhood wasn't normal. But I digress briefly. Today K and I will attend a wedding. I will be wearing a cream suit with a red shirt and a red sequined cowboy hat. K will be wearing a navy blue pinstriped suit with a red camsole, no hat. So she commented that she wished she had some red shoes, and I agreed, that red shoes would go well with my outfit too. I then went on to say that my father had some red sequined stiletto heels that I could have worn with my outfit. What is wrong with that? She laughed and left the room. Well? That for me was normal! My father was an actor, and from time to time dragged up for music hall performances. So he owned dresses, wigs and stillies! And one pair of those stillies were red sequined. Normal. It got me thinking about normality, and I realise that my upbringing was anything but normal, but I wonder what normal is. Because there are things that I remember doing that I look back on now and thing how awful that was to have to do, like stealing food from the cupboard because I was hungry and too scared to ask for food. My sister and I got really good at taking small enough pieces of stuff that no one would notice some gone. And then when we were older (early teens) we could just blame my father, who by then was losing his mind, the fact that my mother hated him and was happy to blame him for anything was an added bonus. But that is terrible, to have to steal food! We also lived in fear of my mother's anger. It seemed to me that she was permanently in a bad mood, probably brought on by my father's increasingly antisocial behaviour, but not a great atmosphere when you are a kid. But it was normal, and you adapt and learn to avoid confrontation. But I get back to the shoes. There must be thousands of kids out there who know about their fathers stash of ladies clothes, who think that all dads dress up in ladies clothes when no one else is about, who think that it is normal.

I still don't have any red sequined stillies to wear with my red sequined cowboy hat. But I will enjoy the wedding anyway. I hope.

Later