Growing up, I was focused, to the point of preoccupation, with being “normal.”

To me—hell, to everyone around me—normal meant average, and average was my aim. Like most kids, I wanted to fit in, but how I didn’t fit in felt metaphysical; there was no real way to fix the ways I didn’t match unless I was born a totally different person.

But that didn’t stop me from trying, hoping, wishing, and fantasizing.

Why was I so fixated on being average?

At every turn, it seemed that I was not meeting the invisible requirements of “rightness.” I never exceeded anything; I always fell far short. I never understood how the why of a person could be wrong.

I knew I was smaller than everyone my age. I knew I was smaller than a lot of kids younger than me. I was aware that I was so far off from the “right weight” for my age that mine didn’t even appear on the height-and-weight-chart for my peer group.

I was on the lowest end of the chart for kids three years younger than me!

The approach I had to learning didn’t match how I was “supposed” to learn, but I knew there were no other options. I understood that the information they threw at us during class was coming at me too fast. My terror of being called on when my hand wasn’t raised made listening to anything impossible.

Because I was consumed with terror about most things and had (what we didn’t then know were) daily panic attacks, I missed out on absorbing vital information.

I froze in the face of testing, placing me academically at the bottom.

And then there was the panic I felt over leaving my mother: I was terrified that if I wasn’t with her, she’d die or disappear. Every other weekend I had to leave my mom to visit my dad, and during the summers I went away to camp, and it felt like I was being dragged to my death.

I didn’t understand that I’d be returned, despite the fact that I always was. Every time I left my mother felt like the last time I’d ever see her—so even emotionally, I seemed to be well below average.

To me, being “below average” meant that I was not enough. That I was fundamentally less than. And so I secretly worried I was defective. There was too much about me that wasn’t enough, that was wrong, and I understood that no matter what I did, I’d never be where I wanted to be—in the middle, average—a place the adults around me couldn’t stop talking about.

Had I known then what I know now, I could have used all that time and energy I spent worrying about being something I wasn’t and instead cultivate the person I actually was.

So, what is it that I know now?

The average person doesn’t exist. There is no such thing.

Somewhere inside me, I’d always felt like “normal” was a fictional concept, and that humans were too variable to fall into any fixed structure.

As someone who didn’t fit inside any set system that existed to calculate growth, intelligence, competence, achievement or ability, but who believed (to varying degrees) that I was skilled and smart about other things—things no one measured (e.g., giving advice, being physically coordinated, project-and-goal oriented, artistic, creative, funny, spirited)—I worried that our systems misunderstood or didn’t fit the dimensionality of humans.

But I didn’t have the words for any of this, that is, until I stumbled across The End of Average, by Todd Rose.

This book was a revelation. It articulated everything I’d always felt and validated me at every turn. Not only that, much of it mirrored my story and restored my faith that difference is our true “normal.”

The End of Average addresses several vital topics I frequently think and write about; I feel confident I’ll be writing several pieces about the many compelling stories that comprise this book.

Today, I’m focusing on the topic of the “average woman,” a woman readers meet very early on in Rose’s book.

To meet this woman, we’re going to go back in time to 1945 in Cleveland, Ohio, just a few weeks after the end of World War II, after two atomic bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

The world is changing, creating new paradigms for normality, and modernizing old notions of femininity—not necessarily for the better.

Eugenic thought is ever-present. In fact, the curator of the Museum of Natural History and the director of the Cleveland Museum of Health, are both Eugenicists.

You’ve just woken up; it’s morning. You plod down to the kitchen table, pour some coffee, and grab the city’s daily paper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer. As you wait for your toast, your eyes fall upon a notice for a contest.

“Are You Norma, Typical Woman? Search to Reward Ohio Winners.”

You’re intrigued. Who is Norma? And what does it mean to be Norma? But more importantly, are you Norma??

As you read on, you discover that this typical woman, Norma, possesses the ideal female form on all nine dimensions: height, weight, bust, waist, hips, thigh, calf, ankle, and foot.

Who knows, perhaps you are Norma, whose nine dimensions are absolutely ideal!? Maybe you could be rewarded with the money or war bonds they’re offering just for being the “typical woman.”

You go find a tape measure…