A lesson learned in life: Never assume a four year old that has long, blonde hair and a feminine face is actually a girl. Despite whether they have a rather female voice or not.
As I waited for the bus that headed for the city, three children approached me whilst I waited at the bus stop. Tugging at my clothes in attempt to get my attention, they spent their time talking to me and just being typical curious kids. Now, only two of them really wanted my attention, which I half provided to them. I learned that one was four, whilst the other was six-years-old; both had a very feminine appearance about them. The four year old had long, blonde hair that was tied up in a messy pony-tail, whilst the other had shoulder length hair that reached her shoulders.
They both wore fairly girl styled clothing, but then again I wasn’t being very observant. I only barely remember what colour their clothing was; mind you, the details of their clothes aren’t important. I boarded the bus and walked to the back, taking my seat, the two girls followed and sat beside me with the mother towing behind and taking a seat nearby. The kids were genuinely pretty cute, in a sort of semi-tolerable way and so I decided to say a compliment to their mother.
“Your girls are lovely,” I said to her as I smiled politely. She smiled back, “Oh, thank you,” she said whilst pointing to the child with the tied up blonde hair, “but that one’s a boy”. I momentarily felt a little embarrassed but the feeling quickly subsided; it wasn’t me who made the child look increasingly like a little four-year-old girl. The real girl decided to tell me that she could count to sixty, which genuinely amused me, because she said she couldn’t count to eighteen. I asked her to do it and she began, “One, two three, four, fifty, fifty-three, fifty-four, fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty.” I wasn’t sure how to respond to that one.
Finally my bus had reached the end of the route in the city, and I walked my way to the closest ATM to withdraw some money. On my way there, I happened to see the most interesting sight that I have never seen before; we’ve all seen emo’s and goths around at some point in our life. Some of you may even be one, others may be friends with one but have you ever seen at least fifty of them grouping at one place, all just talking to each other, and doing nothing else? I wasn’t sure if this was a large meeting to talk about how their life sucks and to arrange a ‘razor cut’ session, or if Brisbane had turned emo-goth and I never received the memo.
I had to walk through them too. An ordinary looking female pushing her way through a crowd of teens all of whom are dressed in ridiculous black outfits, have ridiculous hair styles and wearing smudged, heavy black make-up. I could feel all the depression as I passed; seeing so many people conforming to such a style as though it were a trendy thing to do just made me momentarily sad. It was a shame to see so many people all doing the same thing, and looking the same as each other as though individuality didn’t exist. Then I remembered that it wasn’t my problem, and that at least I was still being an individual.
So I laughed to myself inside and smiled.
