Good question of course! I agree with the others about it being a concept of falling within norms, ie. mathematical concept, which is, of course, the bell curve. But working in the kitchen today, I was thinking about this. Here's another take: I don't think about normal in terms of defining normal. (Wha? ) For me it's been more a experience of reaction. When one gets the puzzled look, wrinkled brow, the tilted head, etc (not to mention outright "you are sooo weird!") that people tend to do when they think something is bizarre... and it happens a LOT, in every sort of circumstance? Yeah. And this may seem a strange thing to mention, and I hope no one takes offense... but I'm inclined to not include high school (or, yikes, jr. high) in this. To be positively blunt, too many at that age are far too quick to don the dismissive face, or the judgemental, catty comment or whatever --almost as a tool of survival and worse, takes place in a nearly self-contained claustrophobic environment. It's for most people the most cliquey and catty time of life to endure, wouldn't you say? Because of this, one would get a skewed perception. Soooo many people feel weird at that time, but it's the phase and the environment and reflects far less reality than it feels at the time.
Me too.