The Norm

[aldersprig]

My Giraffe Call is Open here! Stop in and leave a prompt!

This is to rix_scaedu's prompt.

"Norm?"

All of a sudden, I was back in fourth grade, with Miss Cardigan the substitute looking at me over her glasses. "Norman?"

"No, ma'am." I used the same smile on the secretary that I'd used on Miss Cardigan. "My mother named me Norm."

"That's an old name for someone so young."

"So I've been told. I'm not sure Norman would have been any better." I added the joke-that-wasn't-a-joke. "She was a statistician."

"A... oh!" The secretary got it. Miss Cardigan had gotten hung up on the "was" and missed the joke. "Well, are you?"

"Five foot ten, ma'am, brown hair, brown eyes. I work in an office and I commute twenty-five minutes to work. I got to church once in a while and I jog, but not as much as I should." It was rote by now. Every five years I changed it up, just enough to keep with the times. The bones of the story were true enough - it was just the things I didn't tell that made it a lie.

"Does that make you the norm?"

She was sharper than most. "Well, ma'am." I gave her that disarming smile I had so much practice at. "She could have named me Mean."

It would have been more accurate, in so many ways.

Norm and Mode

Comments

[clare_dragonfly]

Hrm, I think this needs some scene-setting in the beginning, to ground it. I didn't get that this wasn't taking place in the fourth grade until the... sixth paragraph. No, seventh, because in the fourth and sixth I was confused about the secretary and Miss Cardigan but kept going, but kept going because I figured all would be made clear, but at "work in an office" I had to go back and figure out what was going on.

That said, fun. I like the ending. And now I want to know what makes him not normal.

[meridian_rose]

Yes, it's quite funny and very intriguing! I too missed the part where we were in the present again vs the past (some of this is my own fault for speed reading, admittedly, but a few more details about the secretary and how she differs in appearance and reaction from Miss Cardigan might help)

I'm curious about the things he isn't telling!

[aldersprig]

Hrrm, I can work on that.