Normal Sucks: How to Live, Learn, and Thrive, Outside the Lines
Written and Narrated By: Jonathan Mooney
Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
A wonderful reminder to be Yourself, and NYAH! to the System!
I readily admit it: Sometimes I get tired of the new this that or the other, with the sensitivities of others… until I remember that it comes from being marginalized. Not me, noooo, I’ve only been on the Outs as a Woman, Hispanic, Nutbag Extraordinaire. But other than that? Gosh, I’ve NOTHING that has challenged me woefully.
And please consider that, tho’ I worked in a Special Ed setting, I thought I’d heard it all. But I’m old, so I keep hearing new stuff. Consider: Neuro-Diversity. Yup, when I was working it started out as Autism, black and white, then Aspergers started getting some play. By the time I left, we were still talking about kids/students as being On The Spectrum.
Enter Jonathan Mooney who was labeled in the 1970s as being sooooo NOT Normal. Think of all the letters of the alphabet that you can throw at a kid, ADHD, toss in dyslexic, tie it all up with a bow and little empathy, and the poor lad was well and truly feeling broken and at a loss. A simple desk, that aaaallll the other kids sat in with ease, was a torture device to him, confining and restricting. The class taking turns to read aloud? Oh jeez, run to the bathroom and pray pray pray his turn will have passed, only to find that the class waited for him, and only to find that once again, he was reprimanded by the teacher, and made fun of by his schoolmates.
What makes this tale of Neuro-Diversity so awesome, beyond the personal anecdotes of schooling trauma, beyond the history of how the term Normal came into use, are the memories he has of his family upbringing, and that this, Normal Sucks, is like a letter to his own children, each of whom seem precocious and deep-thinking in their own right. That compilation and categorization of the many ways he was NOT Normal? Met with outrage by his own passionate mom. How he once thought that at least his family was Normal? Wellll, maybe nudity and alcoholism weren’t quite The Thing. As Mooney tries to be the best dad he can to his kids, he’s challenged by them to address the estrangement between his own dad and himself.
Cuz gosh, we’re all just trying to get along. And if one seeks to be accepted, p’raps one should learn to be accepting. Is Mooney up for such a challenge?
This is truly well-narrated by Mooney himself, and one can see why he’s on the motivational speaker circuit. All is delivered with fierce passion (As when he begins the Eye to Eye Mentoring program. One of the young men who’s joined is overheard—how can anyone NOT hear him—shouting to a little boy: Normal SUCKS!!!), or with wry humor, or with the exhaustion of getting the short end of the stick in Life… yet AGAIN. To my horror, I almost dinged him cuz I had some difficulty with his sliiiiiight slur -UNTIL- he notes that, in addition to his many and aforementioned labels, tack on “speech impairment”… Yikes! My sincerest apologies!
A wonderful resource for families trying to help their kids grow up to celebrate what makes them unique, which reminds us all to look for strengths rather than what “doesn’t fit”. It’s also a rousing Listen that inspires one to perhaps, maybe, kinda sorta? staaaaart developing talents that one has let go by the wayside, or hasn’t even acknowledged cuz they’re not quite The Thing. I mean, look at what Mooney has done with all his many and varied Xs dealt when so many others are given gold stars to start with!
Emotional, touching, often raw, but usually hilarious, Normal Sucks had me looking at other Jonathan Mooney offerings. And gosh: Chirpbooks? Audible? ANYONE? How about adding HIM to a Sale someday?!
Heck, it mightn’t even be a Sale. When I wanna be inspired by someone who’s looked the System in the eye and knocked it on its head? Jonathan Mooney is The Man!!!
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