Breaking the Norm Essay

A norm is something that is usual, typical, or standard of something in society. Some examples of a norm are going to school, taking a bath, sleeping at night, wearing clothes in public, and eating breakfast lunch and dinner. All those things are stuff we do in our everyday lives and don’t think about it, we just do it because it is normal and it has been taught to us since we have been very little. If you end up breaking the norm though, people will look at you differently and you could really stand out from everyone around you. I am going to challenge this and break the norm to see what other people do and think around me. What I am going to do to break the norm is go to the grocery store with my mom and instead of walking everywhere, I am going to skip. I am going to start skipping right when I get out of the car into the parking lot until the time I get back in the car after shopping. I am even going to skip when I am standing in the checkout line. When I do this I think people are going to give me really weird looks and look annoyed that I am skipping everywhere. I also think my mom is going to feel embarrassed to walk with me. When I broke the norm by skipping everywhere in the grocery store I got the weirdest looks from people, but some people smiled and laughed. I did not tell my mom that I was going to do this and I did not tell her that this was a project. At first my mom laughed, but then she got really annoyed and yelled at me and told me to stop but I didn’t listen to her and kept going. At one point she tried walking in front of me because she didn’t want to be seen with me. All the other people just stared at me with weird faces on and when I would look back I could see them laughing and talking about me. At first when I got out of the car I felt kind of embarrassed to do this because it is not the normal thing to do. As I proceeded to do it though it got easier and I knew I was going to be right about all the people looking at me with weird looks and my mom being annoyed of me and embarrassed to be with me. The lady in the checkout line looked very confused and uncomfortable when I was just skipping in place; she looked like she didn’t know what to do. I just kept skipping though and minding my own business and acting like nothing was wrong. People in today’s society do normal things every single day. When we see someone breaking the norm, like I did, you think twice about that person and wonder what they are thinking. If Americans see someone from another country wearing a turban, or seeing the Chinese foot binding, or seeing different tribes from Africa putting copper rings around the girls necks to make them longer we tend to judge them and wonder what they were thinking. Other Countries could think we are different and not normal too when they see us with mohawks or tattoos or piercings. Those things are normal to us but not normal to other people. When you break the norm you get a really good feel on how everyone does the normal things every day and doesn’t think twice about it until you see someone else breaking the norm.