David McElroy

We are strangers, we are aliens
We are not of this world
— “Not of This World,” Petra

Every time I observe groups of teen-agers interact, I’m reminded of why I disliked that period of my life so much. For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt like an alien on this planet, but there was something about those years that made it seem more acute and more painful. It was the start of realizing just how different I am.

For some teens, there’s a casualness to their social interaction that I never felt. I eventually learned to fake it well, but I never quit feeling like a stranger in a strange land.

By high school, I had leadership roles at church and at school, but I never lost the feeling that I was an actor playing a part when I was with others — like some kind of alien wearing a disguise as a human. It was then that I realized I never felt as alone as I did in crowds.

I was thinking about this again recently because of sitting in a restaurant watching a group of teens interact. There’s a part of me that wants to say that they made me uncomfortable with the forced casualness of their time together, but there’s another part of me that wonders if they really are casual and natural together — and it’s the fact that they can do that so easily with random people that makes me uncomfortable — because I can’t.

Maybe it makes me feel this way because it reminds me of just how different I felt as a teen — and how I’ve continued to feel like the alien who’s pretending to fit in here.

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I’m a really, really good liar. Seriously, I am. When I was growing up, I learned at home how to do it right, even though the same person who taught me how to do it so well would punish me for lying to him.

From a very early age, I learned to answer the phone when my father was dodging certain phone calls. I was coached in exactly what to say to which people, completely without regard to the truth, of course. I was frequently told casually of which lies had been told so I could be sure to back up one of my father’s deceptions if it came up in conversation.

For instance, we were one time on the way to visit my father’s boss when he told me to say that my foot was fine if I was asked about it. He had needed an excuse to leave work one day, so he claimed that I had been injured by having a lawnmower blade hit my foot. (He had read a tiny news item about it happening to another boy, so he just transferred the story to me when it was convenient.) Things such as this were common for me.

As I said, though, lying to him was strictly forbidden. If I was caught doing it — and I was, from time to time — I was severely punished.

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Remember when Madonna was shocking and outrageous? Back in the early ’80s, she combined sexuality with religious imagery in ways that shocked and angered many people. (Personally, I thought Weird Al did it better in his parody than she did.)

Who else has shocked you? Lady Gaga and her meat dress or her recent nude video? Or maybe you’re old enough to remember when John Lennon shocked people by proclaiming that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus.

When I got online Monday morning, it seemed as though the whole world was talking about something scandalous that Miley Cyrus did on an MTV awards show Sunday night. On Facebook, it seemed for awhile that half the posts I saw were about her — some outraged, some disgusted and a few defending her.

I honestly don’t know the specifics of what Cyrus did to get everybody upset — and I don’t care to know. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t watch television, but this isn’t something I’d have been watching even if I did still watch TV. It’s apparently popular with millions of people, but it’s beyond my comprehension to understand why. It’s not that I think I’m too good for a pedestrian medium such as television or something like that. I just don’t think that participating in most of pop culture is very good for me — and I don’t think the culture that’s emerged is a healthy one for anyone.

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