Beware the Vanilla People!

Over dinner this weekend, my son announced with open pride, “I’m the most different kid in my class!”

It’s both thrilling and heartbreaking to hear those words uttered from your child’s mouth. Thrilling because you’ve done your job in ensuring that he understands how special he is and isn’t conforming, but heartbreaking because you know you can never fully protect him from the Vanilla people.

My son is a Rocky Road in a world of Vanilla. (Albeit, the world is becoming more Chocolate than it was when I was a kid, but it’s still not Rocky Road). Vanilla is middle of the road – don’t stick out, bland, fine, good enough, part of the pack. Chocolate is a little more different – but a different that is widely accepted, like being “gifted”. Rocky Road stands out. Rocky Road is different, especially when it’s surrounded by Vanilla. There’s no hiding when you’re Rocky Road. Sure, select groups (usually other weird flavors) REALLY like you, but you’re not the same, and that makes you a target.

Vanilla people don’t “get” Rocky Road people, especially when they’re kids. Vanilla people want to find ways to make Rocky Road people like them. They want to pick away all the bits of marshmallow, nuts, and chocolate chips until they’re just Vanilla. Vanilla moms confide to you that their son was Rocky Road too, but they gave them Drug X, and now they’re Vanilla. Vanilla people think that it’s bad to be Rocky Road.

But if you look at all the really great historical figures – they were all weird flavors. People didn’t “get” them. What would Einstein, Quentin Tarantino, Tolkien, Galileo, Steven Hawking, Da Vinci, Van Gogh, Steve Jobs, or countless other creative minds be if we’d tried to make them Vanilla? Without Rocky Road, where would we be? I shiver at the thought of a world without crazy flavors.

I’m so proud to have a Rocky Road child. May no one ever scrape away all the bits that make him unique!