You have only to read the word ‘abnormality' in a doctor's report to feel utterly freaked out.

That's largely because this dreaded noun acts as a euphemism for yet worse scenarios. Instead of interpreting ‘abnormal' in the narrow, technical sense in which it was meant - i.e. your condition does not correspond with the majority of conditions - we read it as a premonition of the malign and the fearsome. And so we read the sentence, ‘We have found an abnormality in your test results' as ‘You're going to die of something impenetrably obscure and very soon.'

Once faced with this almost metaphysical menace, being ‘normal' appears as not just a relief but as highly desirable. Like passengers who've been on a sinking ferry and just been airlifted back, harrowed and blanch-faced, to shore, we embrace normality as the joyful abatement of terror. Being normal means belonging safely with the ordinary folk, and even where no such drama has preceded it, normality creates a feeling of safe haven. As any kid with a physical defect who's been bullied at school will pray, ‘I just want to be normal'. Hence ‘normalcy', the name of cultural alignment, of non-exception, of access to the bounty of everyday rights.