The Life of Brenna Normal [NANOWRIMO 2014]

➁ Ding Dong Dig

        / Ding Dong Dig \

                                                      ❝The guy behind you won't leave you alone.❞

School was one of the only times Brenna couldn't escape routine. You had to do everything in the school's order or you would fail. Though she understood it in an academic sense. She could not and would not understand order in an everyday life way. She imagined it would be hard for anyone to make her carry the hassle of a routine. Her family had burned out any spark an agenda could hold.

 Monday was never a dreadful day for her. Monday meant escaping her family she had been forced to be with for two full days. The second day of the week meant a new adventure, not some new list of steps to complete.

 To do lists seemed to control the Normals. It ruled over them like a king, they were the tiny defenseless subjects. Sometimes Brenna likes to imagine how this whole thing started. It seemed as if this addiction to agendas just started up at random about four decades of Normal's ago. Yet her mom's family had done the same thing. No one knew when Tansy Tallon's, now Tansy Normal, family started their routine. Was this sort of thing common? Did Brenna just not find other people who did it?

 It didn't seem possible to her that more people in the world would chose to live this boring sort of life. Despite all the downsides, it seemed as though many people in the world gave the idea of having agendas for every aspect of life a second thought. It was plain ridiculousness.

Imagine someone writing down the exact second they would take a gulp of air into their lungs and then calculating the second they would release it. That might not seem too impossible. But, now imagine that is all they ever do in life.

This was practically how she could describe her parents. Long story short, they were utter lunatics. They taught their children to be loony as well. Their life goal was to be as wacky and organized as they could be. At least, that's how Brenna saw it. Plus how the entire city of Orange Beach saw the Normal family. 

The Normals were simple not normal. They were all abnormal in every way. And they were okay with that. Except that Tansy and Elvis were not okay with how atypical Brenna was, and Brenna was not happy with how anomalous her parents and brothers were. They were only fine were how aberrant they themselves were.

 Everything about them all was anomalous, even their city.

Orange Beach, Alabama was a secret to most of the citizens of the United States. And the city made no use in hiding that fact. Signs were put around the town claiming that "Life will "always" be better in Orange Beach" and that it's "The best kept "secret" in the United States".

 Literally, the signs put the quotation marks and everything. No one quite knew why the quotation marks were around "always" and "secret" but, it made for some laughs as you passed by the proud billboards. People would walk passed them saying that even if disaster strikes, life was "always" be better here. After all, if a billboard says it will be, it must be telling the utter truth.

 The city was built up enough to where there was hundreds of places to eat, thousands of hotel rooms to stay in, and attractions to last you a lifetime. Yet, it was smaller than most tourist sites. It made for a comfy town and a great vacation. With a population of only about five thousand, it was a great place to stay.

Brenna had lived her for all her life. So had her parents. And her grandparents. And her great grandparents. Even their grandparents. After all, the Tallons and Normals never did want to change anything up. They liked the Orange Beach so they stayed in Orange Beach. With the exception of the time that the Tallons accidentally bought a new house thinking it was in Alabama when actually it was right on the Florida state line. Plus the only reason they ever bought the new one was because the house they'd been living in for sixteen years had too many problems that would be rational to fix.