thefly

I knew a girl in high school. Hot. I mean sexy, do her all of sixty different ways, HOT. But her face was busted. I mean, bad skin, lop sided face, lazy eye, bad hair. I mean she was really bad off (yes, that sounds "typical male" and cruel but keep reading, perhaps you'll catch a point). We're talking the head of a 2 on the body of a high 8. Mmm... petite body, perky little boobies, well proportioned, round ass... sorry, drifting off into high school whack off daydream. Anyways, smoking except for her face. Years after we graduated I ran across her working in a K-Mart. She probably weighed twice as much as she did in high school. In that meeting, and in retrospect on this day, I think how interesting it is how we classify people.

Most people have a good quality: athlete, good looking, intelligent. To offset this they have a flaw. We as observers choose one of these to highlight. I think as a society we like to find the good. We pick on the scabs these people wear, their flaws, but we like to celebrate their positive. Even nerds become popular during exam time. Back to point, this girl had two obvious points, rocking body, ugly face. Yet age evened them out. Her face was how I recognized her as an acquaintance from high school yet the thing I remembered from high school, her body, was nowhere to be found. With these edges blurred between her good and her bad I finally saw her as she truly was: a southern redneck slut knocked up and living in a single wide with no remarkable persona whatsoever, a neutral slate grey... like every other high school loser in that town. In high school I guess she wasn't much different but I never saw it, never saw the real her.

It makes me wonder now if we are too concerned about labeling people by what we perceive instead of by what they truly are. Do we try so hard to define someone that we never actually find out what they are? Think of any crush you had during your life: did the person ever live up to that fuckable body you thought he/she had or the offhand humor you found endearing? Or do they become a neutral grey in retrospect? Afterall, without a new routine comedians get stale and bodies fail (and augmented ones become scary).

While you take the moment to judge those and agree they weren't nearly as interesting as that quality or flaw take a moment to look at yourself and decide if you turned out any different. Ah. Sometimes what we think only happen to other people really does happen to us all. We like to think we gain wisdom as we age. If we do, I have decided, that we need to meet the real "us." It's frightening; I think most therapy is not about finding the true us but finding the true us and then dealing with what we are. Looks fade, sports ambitions pale in comparison to pussy and beer (leading to mill work to support your several "mistakes" and cover your alcoholism) and we don't stay intelligent if we don't use it (watching Jeopardy! isn't enough you high school calculus students). And we become gray, washed out wastes of youthful potential. I am not where I want to be or who I want to be. I'm gray. If you are, I hope you're doing something about it.

I dare to post this hoping anyone who reads it don't find themselves seeing people for who they truly are. For let me tell you, it is a sad state of affairs to not see positive... or negative... to just see gray.