I don’t know why this is, but I attract weirdos. If the police want to find a serial killer they should just put me in a park and wait for the creepy guy to ask me out.

The thing is, too, that weirdos are people I actually enjoy hanging out with. I can interact with weirdos; really interact, not scrape off surface-level conversations like grit on top of a big rock. I connect with weirdos because they are observant, desperate and intense. (Actually, maybe I connect with weirdos because I am a weirdo, but whatever, keep reading.)

Weirdos watch the people around them and try to analyze everything. They’ve learned that life is shifting and unpredictable, like a floor of tectonic plates. The plates could tilt at any second, and above all things weirdos do not want to be the person scrambling alone on the surface when that happens. So they observe the scenarios playing out in front of their eyes, tensed for any warning of disaster.

Because weirdos know that life is dangerous, they look for something that will save them. I imagine weirdos scanning the floor of a pool, looking for the telltale glitter of something valuable. There’s an old band-aid, there’s a toenail… aha! something shiny. Weirdos desperately search for life, not because they’re more enlightened than normal people, but because they’re simply more exposed.

Weirdos are also intense, often devastatingly so. They are too busy surviving to have room for gloss. This is why we shy away from weirdos; they’re too raw, they’re too real.

To sum up, observation, desperation and intensity draw me toward weirdos. In fact, weirdos have been some of my close friends. I value weirdos, and I think MHS would miss them if they weren’t sprinkled into our classrooms like nutmeg.

But be careful.

Observation, desperation and intensity do not equate a higher, more enlightened person. Forest Gump knew better than Jenny.

Weirdos without love are still broken.

They’re still people.

I knew this before I became close with weirdos, but somehow eventually I came to expect just a little bit more from them, maybe an ability to love because of their brokenness living without it, or an inherent trustworthiness. Do not be deceived. Weirdos look out for number one, just like any other lost person.

So next time you encounter a weirdo, don’t shrug them off as annoying. Weirdos are tangled, grasping people — kind of like me and you.