The Importance Of Unoriginality In Society

“Be unique!” “Find your place in the world!” “Don’t let others get in the way of your goals!” “Be your own person!”—Such are the keys to fulfilling one’s life. All of them sound so peachy and attainable if we just set our hearts to them. No one should want to be average or from-the-mold; it breeds unoriginality, and being unoriginal is a terrible thing. If you will just be yourself, all your dreams will come true!
Hold it a sec.
If there was ever a more atypical child to wander the halls of OHS, I’d like to meet him/her. I have NEVER been typical, even close to it, no matter where I have lived. The whole dual-citizen thing might have something to do with it, but who knows in this world full of influences. There are so many points at which I diverge from the “normal” action process it is ridiculous. Each task I choose to complete is inevitably done in an unorthodox way that I cannot explain. Take my parking habits for example: I never drive in forward; I always reverse. Or even better, my taste, or lack thereof, for fashion: I may be

Every child in kindergarten knew I was strange when I showed up with skin as white as the walls. And it’s not as if I get treated badly by anyone; it just feels weird to be weird.

“Haaken, talk like Ang Moh!” my friends in Singapore would say (Ang Moh is an old derogatory term for a caucasian that is maybe not so derogatory nowadays). I’d then serve them a snippet of the inflections I normally reserved only for my father, an American. They were entertained and intrigued. Every drawled “R” and every “A” not pronounced “ah” were greeted with a snicker of approval. I find that it is no different in the US:
“Haaken, talk Singaporese or whatever!” I must say I am a little more reluctant to show my Singlish side to Americans, but I usually find a phrase or two to blurt out. People got kicks out of my accent switching. It might’ve been what made me a somebody in the bustling halls of