Reflections on being the Goat Skull Guy (and pigeonholing in general)

Over the past few months I have been addressed as ‘Andrew’, ‘Sir’ and ‘Oh no, that guy is com­ing over to talk to us – fake smiles every­one – oh hello Andrew.’ I am con­tent with all of these monikers. What I am less thrilled about is being known as the ‘Goat Skull Guy’. Ever since I blogged about tak­ing my own Goat Skull to work with me for Take Your Skull to School or Work Day I have been cat­e­gorised – or pigeon­holed if you will – as that guy with the skull.

Pigeon­hol­ing is an ugly sport, like ele­phant poach­ing or play­ing Twister in win­ter. It ren­ders both the pigeon­holee and the pigeon­holer one-dimensional and it evokes the image of a car­toon char­ac­ter being shot with pigeon-shaped bul­lets that leave pigeon-shaped wounds. Like I said, it’s an ugly sport.

It can take on many dif­fer­ent forms too. There is Actor Pigeon­hol­ing for actors who never move on from suc­cess­ful roles (Buffy, I’m look­ing at you) and there is Author Pigeon­hol­ing for authors who never escape their most suc­cess­ful books (J.K. I’m look­ing at you). And there is Present Pigeon­hol­ing. This kind of pigeon­hol­ing has prob­a­bly hap­pened to you before. You express an inter­est in – let’s say – cus­tard – and for the rest of your life you receive custard-themed presents: car­tons of cus­tard, cus­tard pow­der, cus­tard apples, books of cus­tard recipes, books about Gen­eral Custer, etc.

But Weird Pigeon­hol­ing – aka being pigeon­holed for a per­ceived weird­ness – is the worst. I say this as both the Goat Skull Guy and as a per­son. I haven’t always been on the receiv­ing end of Weird Pigeon­hol­ing though. At school I was over­shad­owed by char­ac­ters such as Robert the Blood­eater who was known for eat­ing his own blood, Fast Brent who was known for run­ning and Jessie­and­Cassie who were known for being twins.

No, it wasn’t until 2009 that I was truly reduced to being a one-thing won­der. Since post­ing about goat skulls on this blog I have received an end­less stream of emails from peo­ple who say they have been reminded of me by a cer­tain skull or goat-related object they’ve come across.

Does it even mat­ter though? Should we care if we are pigeon­holed? I thought about this a lot and I realised that there is actu­ally a lot more to me. I am a real-life human being with loads of dif­fer­ent lay­ers of emo­tions and gar­ments and per­son­al­ity traits. I am not a goat-obsessed weirdo with a taste for bones. And it really doesn’t mat­ter if peo­ple pigeon­hole me. I felt much bet­ter after I realised this and had freed my mind from a tor­tur­ous line of thought. And so I stepped out­side and went for a leisurely stroll through the goat grave­yard out the back of my house, con­tent in the knowl­edge that I am the well adjusted per­son I have always thought I am.