With or Without You - U2

I remember last year we were given RE homework for the first time in our lives. It was to answer the question 'who am I?'. One girl did it because let's face it, it's RE. She wrote down on a piece of refill rather eloquently that she saw herself as 'a daughter, a friend and a sister'. She said it so inspirationally I was forced to pause. Mr Scho of course noticed one thing about her definition. The other people in her life determined her response to 'who am I?' She then responded that she will always see herself as 'a sister' because her brother died. The class was stunned into silence.

Everyone in our lives will come and go. It's the dynamic nature of life. People change and people move there's no certainty that in ten years they'll be there at your wedding. It's unrealistic to think so. Nonetheless there are some people who despite the fact that the make the briefest of appearance then they leave marks. I've been trying to decide what kind of marks. They aren't footprints. I think that footprints symbolise a parasitic relationship. For some reason you're paths collided and they walked all over you. They may have left a mark but it doesn't last. You heal. A high tide comes along and washes the footprints away leaving you once again with a blank slate.

I want to say that it's like a scar. The problem with a scar metaphor is that it's been used far too often and usually with domestic violence. Some people go through things that we all pray to God every night that we won't ever have to face. They survive. Despite all odds. They deserve to wear their scars. The people who I'm talking about aren't like scars. 

I think that they're like freckles. My cousin is scared about getting freckles to the point where it boarders on insanity. She wears a lot of sunscreen. Anyway... With freckles you're just living life. Enjoying the sun. Perhaps you went to the beach and then sometime later you see it. It kind of stares at you from your arm or leg or any other appendage. I have a drop shaped freckle on my arm which I am particularly fond of. It won't go away. A freckle is a permanent reminder of the time that you had.  These people who I keep on referring to ever so vaguely don't make a grand appearance in your life. It just happens. At first you don't even realise it. Then you just see it. You've been changed. In a small way. But it's a permanent change you can't un-freckle. These people just show up and change who you are.

We're a population. (I always come back to the biological terms. I think it's because I find it easier to retreat into Biology because there are definitions. In some ways I think that that's why I love Biology. There are words inside of books like Continuing Biology and Biozone which are in bold. I know that they'll come out in the exam. Then I just learn the meanings and I get the right answer. It's simple. Black and white. Life isn't simple. I find the concept of life as 'grey' to be incredibly demeaning. It indicates that it's plain and one dimensional. Life can't have a metaphor. It's far too complex.) A group of people living together to survive and unintentionally colliding. That's what I wanted to get at in this post. The concept of coincidence. 

Two people are in the same place at the same time. Or not even that they both happened to make the same choice. Because of that coincidence they collided.  They 'freckled' one another. I think that in many ways that girl in my RE class 'freckled' me. She make me think about something which I'd never considered before. So, I'm grateful that she did her homework.

3 GOOD THINGS

*Imogen reading my blog for the first time in like forever and actually enjoying it.

*Laser force. I loved how Maddi was like the ginger ninja, how Michaela A and Imogen protected the base and used sniper like tactics and how Tim is so tall that he's a walking target. Moreover I loved 'zapping' and being 'zapped' it is ever so fun.

*Snickerdoodles after a confrontation. It has become my coping mechanism. I dislike confrontation. But the snickerdoodles were tasty.

*Megan giving me classical music CD's... I can do 4 if I want!