My body temperature is about 96.8°, almost two full degrees below the common wisdom of what human body temperature is, and one degree below the low end of the more typical range of 97.5° to 98.9°. I used to be secretly quite proud of this; I think that there were so many ways I knew I didn't fit the idea of "normal" (smarter, shorter, thinner, gayer, etc. than the mythical average male) that even as a young child I began unusually to revel in my differences, in being unique.
I found out last month that my dad's body temperature is around 97.6°, just at the lower end of the range. And I just read an article this morning noting that up to 5% of the population falls outside the typical range. So body temperature-wise, I'm no more special than those other millions of human beings. I was at least hoping for a percentile with a bunch of nines in it.
