Life is a Bell Curve

Bell Curve: A symmetrical bell-shaped curve that represents the distribution of values, frequencies, or probabilities of a set of data (The Free Online Dictionary).

Or, if you’d like my explanation: Bell curves help us understand the distribution of occurrences in a two dimensional way (by drawing pleasant pictures) and is familiar to most people because teachers use it in grading pupils’ tests.

Sometimes I like to think reality is made up of millions of these little mountains.

The apexes of all Bell Curve mountains are called Normal Peak, most people live on the top or sides. The valleys on either side of this two-dimensional mountain are called Freak Gulch and Strange Hollow; not a lot of people live there and sometimes it’s lonely. There is whole range of these mountains, each representing some attribute of the human race, like physical characteristics, mental acuity, happiness, health, experience, growth, personality, and much more. Some of the Bell Curve mountains in my illustration cannot exist in reality, because there are  things about humans that we can’t quantify. Others, like the ones illustrating height and weight, have existed for a long time.

An individual might sit smack dab on Normal Peak (such a convenient place from which to look down on all the others, eh?), but it would be a mistake to get too comfortable. On some other Bell Curve Mountain representing some other attribute, they may be looking up from the depths of Freak Gulch.

And I find it interesting that in geographical reality this is usually not the case. Most people live in big cities, and most big cities are not on the tops or sides of a mountain (at least in the US). 

This won’t make sense to me either when I read it later. I'm wandering around Strange Hollow today.