We Were Once Extraordinary

Mediocre

Six Months After The Event

People assume very little of me. I suppose they should. There isn't much to see, hence very little to assume.

I'm mediocre at best.

I am of average height. Brown skin that isn't too light, or too dark, a tawny color according to the skin charts that you see in magazines, the ones you see in the aisle while checking out groceries but never bother to pick up. Hair that is medium length, type 2b (again the magazines). And plain brown eyes. I'm not fat, but I'm certainly not skinny. According to the magazines I have a pear body type, even though I've never been too fond of pears. An oval-shaped face to go with the pear-shaped body.

Mediocre.

Easy to blend in.

Extraordinary.

The town I live in isn't any different. Somewhere in the middle of Florida. Not North enough to be almost completely white and republican, but not South enough to be tourist filled. We aren't far from the beach, maybe around ten to fifteen minutes. But we live in a world where ten to fifteen minutes is considered too much time. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't.

Maybe.

I like that word. Maybe. It seems simple, too commonly used in everyday language for people to give it much thought. But maybe is different. It makes people think. Maybe means it could, or it couldn't be. I would like to be a maybe. Make people think about me. Make them wonder.

I would like to be there for them to question. To make assumptions, and for those assumptions to be wrong, instead of normally being right.

Right.

Wrong.

Such terrible words, but such important ones. So many important things are terrible. Money is important to today's society, but it still is terrible. Healthcare is important but is terrible because it is now monopolized. The world is important, but we have made it terrible.

Terrible.

Terrible.

Terrible.

My thoughts or many of them are terrible, but unlike other terrible things they are not important. But things that aren't important are satisfying.

Like sunsets.

Like flowers.

Like art.

They aren't important, but they satisfy us. And that satisfaction makes us better, it manages to hide the world from those can't see it for what it really is.

I take a sip of my coffee. It's plain, sort of boring, too bitter and hardly not sweet enough. I believe it because the new kid made it, a skinny barely over fifteen-year-old who looks too happy to be here. But that isn't my problem, it isn't the reason I came here.

I look around observing people and what they do. Each one of them doing what normal people do, but every now and then you might see that one unordinary person. After a long list of just coffee's, someone might order a tea. Or maybe you might see an elderly couple sit down, instead of the hordes of teenagers that take up the tables and the leather chairs in the seating area. You might find a slight difference, an irregularity.

Perhaps before I would have written about it. I would have taken out my laptop from my tan leather messenger bag, and started typing away creating stories, giving each person a background, a personality. Perhaps I would have assumed what they were like by their habits. If the girl tucked a strand of hair away from her face after one of the boys in a group made a joke. Or a story about the elderly couple and the black fedora the man wore, the one you would only see in movies and almost never in real life. Perhaps I would have chosen to give them different personalities, change what could happen. If one thing in their lives had changed, I would have maybe wondered what would be different. What if the girl hated the boy? What if she was actually interested in the brunette two seats away from her? What if the elderly man never met the woman? Would he still wear the hat?