“There is somebody for everyone.”  This is something our grandmothers used to tell their grandchildren who despaired of finding a “match.”  When it seemed as if there was no perfect mate for them. 

First of all, let me be clear.  I don’t necessarily believe in “perfect mates.”  I believe that you find someone you can love who can love you back.  Sometimes it’s a love at first sight feeling.  Sometimes it feels like that so-called chemical response that grows into something deeper.  Sometimes it starts as a close friendship that develops into a deep love relationship.  Regardless, these are those “perfect mates.”

But what grandma was trying to say was that as much of an oddball as we might feel like sometimes, there was another oddball out there who would like us for who we are. 

These days, that concept is so much harder to grasp.

These days, the oddballs are put into categories or forced into slots that they may or may not belong in.  All in an effort to make them feel less like oddballs.  But is that the right thing to do?

By being odd, or at least feeling odd, I learned to like myself and my differences.  I was a bookworm. I like playing soldiers with the boys more than dolls with the girls.  I preferred chemistry sets to make-up sets.  I was a self-proclaimed tomboy. But I liked myself. 

So, in college, when those masculine traits, combined with my lack of sexual activity, encouraged the popular hockey player that I turned down for sex to proclaim me a lesbian, I didn’t really care.  I cared that I was being labeled something that I wasn’t, but I knew myself and it just didn’t matter.

In this day and age, kids, teens and people in general, don’t have that chance.  If I were a kid in this era, and cut my hair short and played football at recess with the boys, I would be told that I was a lesbian or trans.  At the age of 7, what did I know.  Would I have questioned myself?  Worse yet, would I have agreed and started down that path not knowing any better and trusting that the adults around me were correct in their analysis?  After all, they were adults. They had been around a lot longer and I was told to trust their judgement.

My husband loves to cook.  He loves to garden.  He grows the most beautiful roses.  And making sauces is one of his greatest joys – much to the detriment of my waistline!

He also is a retired electrician. Rebuilt the upstairs bathroom. Put in a new bathroom in the basement.  He also rebuilt a 1964 Chevy Impala from the frame up.  He’s 6 feet 3 inches tall and played defensive tackle throughout his teens and 20s. 

But if he started cooking in grade school in this day and age, not to mention the gardening, would he have been steered away from his more “masculine” pursuits?  I doubt it.  He again, knows who he is and has always known.  But someone who might be worried about themselves.  Who isn’t quite as self-confident.  They would worry. 

In this current world, our society encourages our youth to pigeonhole themselves. Gay, lesbian, binary, asexual, transexual, the list goes on and on and on.  But by doing so, we’ve actually turned away from what used to be one of our biggest values – individuality. We used to celebrate our differences.  Different nationalities. Different faiths. Different cultures. Different goals. Different backgrounds. What happened to celebrating individualism.  The effeminate man who was also happily married with children to the slightly butch woman who worried she wouldn’t find someone who appreciated her for who she was.  The athletic woman with an athletic husband both coaching their kids’ teams’. The outdoorsy couple with no kids who want to adventure around the world unencumbered. They all found each other and chose each other despite having very different goals, different plans, different attitudes.   I know these couples personally.  If they had chosen the more obvious paths, they wouldn’t have the lives they have now. They wouldn’t be the happily married couples they are now.

What have we done?