What's Normal Anyway?

"What?" she gasped, staring at him, wide eyed. "How? What? Why? You don't deserve that!" with each word she spoke, her voice grew louder and louder. It was a struggle not to straight out scream.
"Thank you." Was all he could think to say in response.
"I don't get it," she said honestly, her voice a whisper. "How can they be so cruel to someone so wonderful?"
"They don't know me," he said simply. "All they know is what I am."
"It's part of who you are. It doesn't define you! It shouldn't define you!"
"It's different, and in this day and age, different causes heads to turn. Different is seen as wrong."

"What's different?" she asked loudly, rising swiftly to her feet. "Really? Somebody tell me what it is, because I don't know!"
"It's..." her friend started to say, abruptly closing his mouth as she opened hers.
"No! There is no such thing as different." He breathed a sigh of relief at the lessened volume of her voice. "No one's exactly the same. Not even identical twins!"
"Okay, Pia, what are you saying?"
"Well, if no one's exactly the same, how can there be a 'normal'? and if there's no 'normal', then how can someone be different?"
"Hmm..." he said as they sat down again.
"So what's normal anyway?" she said. "Because no one's version of what normal is is the same. So how can there be a normal?"
"You make a good point," he said. "In an ideal world... if only everyone was as accepting and willing to make a stand as you are."

"I just don't get it" she said, all the fire apparently drained from her system. "I was always taught not to judge a book by it's cover. So to come out and see people judging others so harshly, just because they're not like them ... It all feels so foreign, and unfair, and..." crying now, she paused to sniffle a little. "I think I liked it better in my little shell, where I didn't know about the cruelty that awesome people like you have to face everyday, so unfairly."

"Well," he said, taking a breath. "It takes people to make a change, and the more people in support of something, the sooner the change arrives. Maybe you could join the movement." He stood up, smiling at the idea that entered his mind. "Hell! Pia, you could lead the movement with your passion!"