Tuesday Talks
 

October 4, 2011

Jose Esqueda '12

To listen to Jose's Tuesday Talk - click the play button...

 

 

I’ve been called weird about as many times as Swain has had his birthday publicly announced. Not artsy. Not eccentric. Not quirky. Not special. Not different. Not odd. See...off the top of my head, six different adjectives all of which are slightly more flattering and yet it seems that nothing gives people more satisfaction than saying “Jesus kid.....you’re like... really weird.”

As of lately, I guess I’m starting to see more and more why people keep calling me this but really, I still find it more logical to think that I’m the normal one and, it is in fact all of you who are strange. 

But if I were to conform, if I were to justify my reasoning for not following social tendencies, I would have to blame my strangeness on the fact that I get bored rather easily I suppose. And, that I find most of the general methods of entertainment pretty ineffective. I figure most kids play video games and whatnot if they were ever bored; I, actually, find making social situations extremely awkward to be...well hilarious really.

Take conversations for example. It seems that I have a natural ability to say some sort of inopportune phrase at precisely the ideal moment in a conversation for it to be completely and I mean completely inappropriate. You ever ask two people, who were right next to each other, when they were finally going to get together because they obviously liked each other and you were tired of waiting for that to happen?

Well I haven’t...I’m telling you, the stuff I was talking about was like really inappropriate. Much more inappropriate than that.

If you consider yourself a close friend of mine, you most likely know exactly what I’m talking about, considering you’ve probably been a victim of a moment like this or you’ve been close enough to experience the aftermath, whether it was the ensuing of hilarity or, perhaps more commonly, a berating from a faculty member.

I also enjoy talking to strangers, as long as they are under thirty and don't have beards. Surprisingly, these conversations have a habit of going fairly well; I’ve met very interesting people on the various four hour train rides from Carpinteria back home to Santa Ana. It’s surprising how much people will tell a complete stranger when they consider that they will probably never see that person again.

Of course, these conversations also have the upmost potential to be pleasantly disappointing. Take this recently prior outings week, for instance. I was on a plane heading towards Boston in order to look at colleges. Although I was accompanied by my sister, there was some sort of mix up with the tickets which forced us to have separate seats. I got to sit in 5B towards the front of the plane while my sister had no other choice but to sit in 33A, the last row of the plane right next to the bathroom. I looked back from my seat to see the frustrated look on her face and all I could think was “Yeah...I’m ok with this.” Anyway, I soon realized how long of a flight it was going to be so I figured I had nothing to lose by speaking to the guy next to me.

He was a gentleman from Virginia, I believe. Once I learned of this information I thought “Wow, this is great. I don’t know very much about Virginia and I’ve never been there but my dear friend, Jeremy Miller, is from Virginia; perhaps he knows him.” I was about to ask him about Jeremy, when I happened to notice that this man seemed to be shivering an impressive amount.

“ Hey man...why are you shivering so much?” I asked him, curiously, “Are you cold or something?” “....What?” He replied. “Oh that. Yeah no.... I’m just coming down.” It took me a few seconds to completely register what he was talking about but once I did I realized I had no freaking idea how a normal human being was supposed to respond in that situation. I said the first thing that came to mind which happened to be: “HMMM....THAT’S COOL I GUESS.” and immediately put on my headphones. It’s apparently a lot easier to avoid eye contact with a person who is sitting next to you for six hours, than you would think.

The point is I have been in a lot of interesting situations. I’ve stepped out of my “comfort zone” a good amount, as the fine facilitator of both the freshman and sophomore seminar courses would say, and ultimately that has determined how people view me as a human being. I regret nothing. I also don’t expect every person I come across to somehow instantly admire me for my eccentricity. I HAVE angered a lot of people in my day but I like think I’ve won the affection of an even greater number of people. So i’m not standing up here and telling you to get to know me, i’m merely suggesting that you strongly take into consideration how beneficial being my friend would be. I’m not weird now, nor have I ever been weird. But, gun to my head, if i were forced to label myself as something, I’d have to just say that i’m simply “one-of-kind.”