The Note Pad

Once there was a squiggle on a page.
He felt blue - in fact he was blue.
He compared himself to the perfectly formed star in the top right hand corner.
"Why can't I be like you?" he asked the star.
"Because I am beautiful and symmetrical and you are a mess," said the star. "Look at you; you don't even know where you begin and where you end."
The squiggle frowned. It was true; once upon a time there was a logical beginning, but there wasn't one he could see anymore.
He sighed and looked up at the straight, ruled lines at the top of the page.
"Why can't I be like you?" he asked the lines.
"We are the result of a lot of care and attention," the lines replied. "You had little thought put into you."
The squiggle held back tears. It was obvious that the lines had had a lot of thought put into them. They served a function. They were straight and true - not like his own deviances.
Along the edge of the page were some curlicues forming a nice pattern.
"Why can't I be like you?" the squiggle lamented.
"Our lines go somewhere to form a pretty border. We're not all random like you," the curlicues said.
"Oh it's true!" the squiggle exclaimed. "I don't even know what I'm supposed to look like. Not like the frog, or the cat, or the sewing machine, or the flower." The squiggle looked around him and tears welled in his eyes as all the other drawings on the page just made sense to him.
"Don't worry," came several voices from below him. "We are just tiny circles of no consequence, but we know that we are all made from the same stuff."
"I don't get you," said the squiggle wiping his tears.
"Look around you," continued the circles. "The star, the lines, everything on the page was drawn in ink. We might have all been conceived with different intentions but we are all the same."
The squiggle now saw the truth. That no matter what he looked like he was from the same pen as everyone else around him. His irregular form became what set him apart and he was happy that he wasn't just another circle, curlicue, star or line. He finally felt like he could just be himself.

"I'm not like everyone else," mumbled a smudge of lead pencil.
"Yeah, but you were a mistake," said the squiggle, and he and the star and the lines and the curlicues and the circles, and the frog and the cat and the sewing machine and the flower, all laughed at the unfortunate stain upon their existence.

The end.




© Sam Rodgers, 2006