It dawned on me recently that I am extra ordinary in many regards. Of course I am a beautiful unique snowflake in spirit, but evidence is mounting indicating that I am actually pretty damn average in reality. Consider the following areas where I am doing an exceptional job of being “normal.”
My given name at birth was Michael Steven Smith.
In the year I was born Michael was the number one most common US male baby name. It was actually the most common for several decades in a row.
My middle name Steven was number 27 on the list.
My last name Smith was and still is the most common US surname. 880 people in every 100,000 in the US have the last name Smith. It is also the most common surname of our neighbors up north in Canada.
Bonus fact: My biological father and stepfather are both also named Michael.
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/decades/names1970s.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_common_surnames_in_North_America
My biological father and mother divorced.
According to the APA 40-50% of all US marriages suffer the same fate. My name changed when my stepfather adopted me.
I am 38 years old.
The national median age was 37.8 years in 2015.
Suburban middle aged white guys.
I am 176 cm tall. In American, that is 69.3 inches or just under 5 foot 10 inches.
The average US height for adult Caucasian men is 177 cm or 69.7 inches, which is approximately 5 foot 10 inches tall.
I weigh approximately 75 kilograms or 165 pounds.
According to statistics from the CDC for my age, sex, and race, I am in the 5-10 percentile group. Their data does not take into account height, however. My Body Mass Index (BMI) is ~24, which falls into the “Normal” range.
I wear 32-34 inch waste and 32 inch inseam pants.
In the US, the highest percentage of adult males purchase size 34 pants at close to 55 percent.
I wear a size named “Medium” in almost all clothing.
medium
/\ˈmēdēəm/
adjective
- halfway between two extremes of size, amount, length, etc.; average.
“Mike is five feet ten inches tall, of medium build”
synonyms: average, middling, medium-sized, middle-sized, moderate, fair, normal, standard, usual
not that kind of medium
I have a partial US college education.
It turns out that is pretty normal. According to US census data, ~63% of Americans age 25 to 34 have “some college” as their highest level attained. I attended a strikingly average public school the University of West Georgia.
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/university-west-georgia-1601
I have type II diabetes.
Aside from being extra sweet, it is a shockingly common chronic disease in the US (top 10). More than 100 million Americans have diabetes or prediabetes and it was the seventh leading cause of death in the United States in 2015.
CDC Press Releases
Press Release For Immediate Release: Tuesday, July 18, 2017. More than 100 million Americans have diabetes or prediabetes...
www.cdc.gov
CDC
I am right handed.
That is really normal.
I had* brown hair and have brown eyes.
Brown is the most common eye color. In the US only 1 out of 6 people have a light eye color. 55% of people worldwide have brown eyes. This is no surprise, of course, because brown is dominant gene.
My favorite color is blue.
According to the Internet and a nearly 2,000 person survey conducted by University of Maryland sociologist Philip Cohen, 42% of men share my love of the color blue.
I was born in the middle.
Of the country. In the great flat state of Indiana in a far away land referred to as the “Midwest.” Also, home of the controversial “General American” dialect of which I can speak fluently when not slipping into a Southern drawl.
Of course, as a white male American I write all of this from a place of exceptional privilege. As I continue down the road of growth and development as human, my extra ordinary traits are a reminder of how much I need to explore and seek to understand other people’s diverse and interesting backgrounds. Work in progress…
