"One of the weirder entries in my gallery of oddballs."

Yikes! Yeah, there's this horribly unfortunate tension between recognising abnormal behaviour and being seen as (and even seeing yourself as) small-minded or unkind.

I don't think there's a way to get this balance completely correct. There is, obviously, such a thing as a person who is weird but not bad. But the main reason we miss red flags is that we get the balance badly wrong.

One of the many things we have to thank critical theory and postmodernism for is the erosion and stigmatisation of our concept of "normal." As I wrote recently, normal should be as broad a category as we can reasonably make it. But it desperately needs limits. For everybody's sake.