How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
My friends had some clue I was abnormal […] I could stare off into space sometimes and not be hearing them until they shoved me. (2.15)
In other words, what makes Torey abnormal to his friends is his fondness for thinking. Following the logic of this, then, what makes someone normal to these kids is not thinking. We're pretty sure this isn't a good sign about them.
Quote #2
Chris Creed is about as "grounded" and "normal" as a chimpanzee. (2.32)
Is a chimp normal? We think so. But maybe not according to Steepleton standards. They seem to have a bunch of unwritten rules of behavior that chimps, and apparently Chris Creed, don't understand.
Quote #3
[…] I had never given any thought to the Apostle's Creed or why we said this thing week after week. I thought it was just something "normal" that we said. (2.38)
Here we see normalcy equated with habit, something done without thought or question. Interestingly, here it's associated with religion.
Quote #4
And the normalcy of it got me looking at the Creeds like they were normal people again […] Things don't have to be sane when they're normal. (2.38)
Normalcy in this situation acts as a sort of numbing agent for Torey. Through saying the Apostle's Creed, he stops thinking critically about the Creed family, and starts seeing them as normal again. What do you think he means when he says "Things don't have to be sane when they're normal"?
Quote #5
"[…] We have a normal life, and the only thing we have that he didn't is friends." (3.54)
Whoa, now. We might not know much about normalcy but we are sure that Chris was denied a whole lot more than just friends. He didn't have opportunities to become an individual person or even to grow up and gain independence at all, thanks to his totally domineering mother, so Alex is wrong here. But this is part of what's so sad about Chris's story—no one knew this about Chris's home life, so they all blame Chris for not fitting in.
Quote #6
He was seeing himself at that point the way other people did—as a social 'tard, an obnoxious reject. (6.58)
Has anything like this ever happened to you? Have you ever thought one thing about yourself only to be confronted with a different—and really rough—reality? This makes us want to hug Chris super badly.
Quote #7
Richardson had sent Creed to the hospital, and the only other person in the world to do that was me. Nobody was wondering if I had killed Creed. (7.37)
Being acceptable, or normal, can buy you a free pass—being different attracts attention and suspicion from the "normal" majority, who seem unable to understand anyone unlike them.
Quote #8
"As your mother I'm telling you: This is not the type of person to whom we expect you to endear yourself, considering we are paying five thousand a year in property taxes […]" (10.31)
Looking at surface stuff, yeah, Bo has a bad rep. But as is so often the case, there's way more to this tough kid than meets the eye. Luckily Mrs. Adams is open-minded enough to realize this.
Quote #9
But he only did what he had to do to keep going. To be normal and be popular and have fun and keep going. (21.15)
If you think of normal as being whatever it takes to survive—like, the most normal thing about anyone is the survival instinct—then Chris was totally normal considering his circumstances.