You walk down a crowded city street, and your eye catches a willowy young woman dressed up to the elegant nines, with perfect make-up and this season's trendy accessories. Is she extraordinary in any way other than obviously having the means to be right up there on the bleeding edge of style?
You're in a coffee shop and you overhear two people discussing "The book" - are they both just "ordinary" readers? Did one of them write a book? Did both? Did one or the other or both get published, or get good reviews, or win awards? How "ordinary" are they? How far past a certain line do they have to be before they might be considered to be "out of the common herd"?
Is the mother of two who still holds down a full-time job extraordinary?
Or is it just the people who do something that makes you come up in goosebumps?
Take a look at this guy. If you passed him in the street you wouldn't remember it - he's the quintessential "ordinary", a short chubby guy with a too-round face and a cheap suit and hair cut too short. You learn a bit more about him in this article, and damn, but he's as ordinary as he can get - a mobile phone salesman, probably one who would scuttle if you snarled at him in the store, he looks mild and innocuous and Milquetoast-like, and, well, you might dismiss him as irrelevant... and then he opens his mouth.
Take a good look at the judges' faces, when he starts singing. They all *sit up*. Their jaw drops almost visibly. And practically the entire audience is wiping away tears.
That's extraordinary.
And it just goes to show - the extraordinary hides in the most unlikely of places, sometimes. Which means that we are all, to some extent, extraordinary - it's just that some of us never get a chance to show just how.
Late breaking edit:
Here's his semi-final performance. He is still amazing.
