on sunday night, philip and i went to go see Napoleon Dynamite. it was easily as funny as we expected it to be (infinitely funnier than the last comedy i viewed in the theater - Starsky and Hutch), and, in addition to containing some classic lines ("i'm gonna do whatever i feel like doing, GOSH"), i found that i really did identify with the characters. While napoleon and friends are conspicuously geeky, something i have meticulously avoided being (at least to the casual observer), their idiosyncracies and quirks are much closer to mine than i maybe even want to admit.
living in rural idaho in the mid-'90s, napoleon - characterized by his parted 'fro, moon boots, and drawings of ligers ("pretty much" his "favorite animal; it's like a lion and a tiger mixed") - pedro - characterized by a classic premature mexican 'stache, Jesus and mary iconic candles, and "sweet bike" - and deb - characterized by her side ponytail, caboodles, and lanyards - make up a sort of (sub)urban tribe, all vastly different yet creating a community that makes sense to them. obviously misunderstood by their fellow high school classmates, napoleon and co. are picked on, rejected, or at best, pitited. yet despite their displeasure with how they're treated, the trio never tries to be anything they're not. unlike other high school comedies such as She's All That, in which, to the relief of the audience, the star geek becomes cool and attrative, napoleon is flailing ungracefully at the tetherball in the final scene, and i loved him for it.
when i was in middle school, my three girlfriends and i dubbed ourselves the "fliquers" in an attempt to combat the clique of "popular girls" of which we were not a part. our flique passed notes in the form of a paperback book on whose pages we wrote; we nicknamed the boys we liked things like "window with a view," "mihole," "OEOEA," and "luap the lion." we relished band; we listend to Amy Grant's Heart in Motion at sleepovers. we were misunderstood and left out by the cool girls and rejected by the very boys we so endearingly nicknamed. but we had each other. rather than try to find a way to fit in, we formed a subculture and found a place to belong that was safe and bizarre and beautiful.
in high school, my friends and i - one girl the same as middle school, and the other two new - were no less weird. in fact, how strange we acted probably increased. now our jokes were peppered with things like leap cows, v-teams, markie the unicorn, hoochie the leopard, and knitboy. our quirky teachers provided us with endless entertainment - mr. steely's back room, the secret affair going on between mr. davis and mrs. erickson (masked by the need to "borrow her calculator"), mr. o'neil spying on us during prayer, the detzner strip, mr. culp balancing stools on his chin, mr. mckay throwing chalk, mr. bartel wanting to "talk to you so much!" ... as a supremely untalented cheerleading squad, we made up individual cheers for the guys on our team ("paul! he's tall! so pass the ball to paul tall paul!"). we threw small stuffed animals around in study hall. we called ourselves the "pigeons." we were undeniably weird, and we had a blast.
this quirkiness followed me into college, when, during my freshman year, we stole a couch from the hallway and made awards lists for each other of our most unique attributes (i won "longest legs" and "pointiest nose," among other things). my group of friends sophomore year on refered to ourselves as "ladies in waiting," and while we militantly rejected dating relationships, we talked about swinging from the vines, abdul muhammed, and "b-kat - where you at?" we "washed the windows" to prince's "kiss" and and tooled around on duct-taped motor scooters honking the feeble horn at people we passed.
even now, i find myself in groups whose behavior, from the outside, would seem foreign and odd. i hang out with people who say "happy sabbath" to each other, and i get up at 6:30 in the morning to power walk around my neighborhood with my roommates. my own relationship with philip is filled with so many inside jokes and made-up terms that if you were to tape record and listen to one of our conversations, you'd probably shake your head in bewilderment.
i read one review of napoleon dynamite that said they could relate because "we all knew people like that in high school." not me. i could relate because i have always been one of those people - weird, wonderful - a part of communities that are a little left of center. we care massively about things that are in effect very small. we break out into a fluid dance and then run awkwardly off the stage when we realize we're still going and the music has stopped. we remind each other of what our skills are. we've got wigs for when one of us has accidentally shaved off all their hair. we're misunderstood by the outside, but we make perfect sense on the inside. anyone who has ever been a part of a community like this ought to be able to "get" napoleon dynamite.
wanna play me in tetherball?
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