My head moves like a metronome, pivoting left-right-left-right at around 92 beats per minute. The only reason I know this specific number is because the drum majors in my high school marching band timed it out with the Dr. Beat. They said, "92!" and I said, "What?"

"92 head-wobbles per minute!"

I called them jerks, and that was that.

My mother recalls that, from the second I could pull myself up into a sitting position as a baby, my head nodded to one side, and then the other, and back again. She told stories of how she'd find me perched in front of the television, mesmerized by "Barney," my head bobbing back and forth. It was weird, certainly. In my nearly 21 years of life, I've never seen another person whose head moves like mine. It wasn't disgusting or gross, but definitely weird. My parents took me to many doctors when I was a young girl, but none of them had an answer to the question my parents had since I could sit up on my own: What is wrong with her head? The doctors ruled out a few things: cancer, Tourette's, imminent death, etc. The doctors said, essentially, that I had a weird tic and not much could be done about it.

The strangest thing is, I don't notice my head moving when I walk. My eyes move with my head, so I don't feel any change of motion. I feel, I think, how anyone else would feel. In fact, I can even control it for small periods of time, if I really focus. When I'm trying to keep my head still, I mentally chant: "Head. Still. Head. Still. Head. Still." And then my head is still, but soon other thoughts consume my mind, and I figure I'd rather daydream or sing a song in my head than try to stop something that seems to have other plans.

I always thought that the tic would prevent me from getting boyfriends. Boyfriends were what I was most concerned with, while my mother fretted over whether or not I'd get sad when the other kids would make fun of me. (And they did-- but for most of them, their questions stemmed from curiosity rather than meanness. Except for one little girl, in the second grade, whose name was Katie. She asked, "What's so wrong with your neck? You look stupid!" She made me feel pretty bad, but I just looked her up on Facebook and she got fat. Ha.)

(Author's note: my wobbliness has never put a damper on my dating life. I've been snagging dudes since the 8th grade, bobble head be damned.)

Ryan, the sweet guy I've been dating for almost a year, pokes fun at it all the time, yet he claims he didn't notice it till I pointed it out to him. I realized (especially since dating Ryan, who's a type-one diabetic) that "weird shit about my body" is a lighthearted ice breaker. If people know you're a human bobble head, maybe they won't feel so self-conscious about whatever weird things they have. On our second date, Ryan said to me, "I have to be careful about carbs, because I have diabetes." And I said, "Oh, well I'm a bobble head."

It's the weirdest feeling in the world, when you're walking down the street, and suddenly it hits you: "People are probably making fun of me from behind their car windows." I mean, the tic is just funny looking. It doesn't make me look deranged (I hope), nor does it make me look like I'm under the influence of drugs (again, I hope). It just makes me look like an eerily happy person, who's always got a happy little song in her head, whose beat she walks to wherever she roams.

Although many people who know me think the tic is endearing and adorable, I'm still a little self-conscious about it. Sometimes, I feel as though I need to work even harder to get people to take me seriously, especially as graduation and job interviews are approaching. It's hard to read people's reactions to it. My horn professor here at college said he's never noticed it, but maybe he's lying. My internship coworkers said that, while they did notice it, they thought it was simply kinda cute. I can live with kinda cute.

There are some perks to being a bobble head, even if you have to do some digging and justifying. I'm hopeful that I'll always be a cheerful presence around the office, because I am physically unable to storm away angrily. Even if I'm so pissed I could karate-chop someone's head off, my retreat would look optimistic and happy. Additionally, if people are going to stare at my funny little head from their car windows as they wait for the light to change, I should keep myself presentable, fit, and slim (#motivation). Perhaps, one day, if someone video tapes one of my marathon finishes or anything else noteworthy, I could become a hilarious internet sensation, like the "How bow dah" girl. I could trademark the wobble. I could get merch. I could get one of those little blue check marks on my Instagram profile.

I sometimes worry about passing it on to my children. Like, when I walk my bobble-child to school in the morning, will our bobbles sync up? Will they always be half a bobble apart? What if Ryan and I have kids and they're diabetic bobble heads? Poor things. Plus, they'll have us as sub-par parents so the little creatures are already pretty disadvantaged.

Sometimes it kind of blows having something just weird about you, and having it be pretty obvious. But then I remember, it could be so much worse. I could have a chronic and invisible illness. I could have cancer. I could've been in a terrible car accident. I could be on TLC's "My 600 Lb. Life." I could be Melania Trump.

Now I'm babbling. The point is: everyone has some weird shit. Sometimes the shit is on the outside, other times it's on the inside. Sometimes the weirdness manifests itself in dark, mysterious ways.

And other times, it just makes you a bobble head.