• Dont you think It’s strange how people act and judge one another. Sometimes I just stare into space; another one of my many futile attempts to understand the perplexity of human behaviour. Don’t get me wrong… I’m no alien in this neurotic society, but I’ve always felt alienated in some way. A few people may agree with this hypothesis, others may throw their heads back in a wolfish cackle, claiming this to be absurd. What they think of that particular subject is none of my business, so I won’t explore that point.

    Ever since I was a baby, I never smiled. I just looked around with darting eyes, analysing and observing. Actually, that was the only behaviour that betrayed the fact that I wasn’t retarded. I was dull, inexpressive, unresponsive, and disquietingly void of any ‘normal’ baby behaviour. Oh yes, boy was my mother worried. ‘I was horrified you might have been a social vegetable’ she says to me. ‘Oh gee, thanks mum…’ I’d quietly think to myself.

    Her life wasn’t easy either. So I can’t blame her for being so utterly terrorised by the concept of having an idiot child. She was unlucky enough to have a mentally unstable Australian want to marry her, and the gaining of an Australian citizenship surprisingly only made things worse, when my ‘father’ screwed up her life so completely that she wound up as an isolated crazy woman clutching a child for 5 long years, unable to return to her homeland anymore.

    The truth is no one ever notices these things. We waltz through life, seeing only what we want to see. Everyone seems to take an ‘I like coke, but I refuse to believe that it’s mostly liquefied sugar’ kind of attitude. Maybe this is why we live in such a segregated world... or maybe not. I wouldn’t know. Apparently being under the age of twenty automatically labels me ‘social scum’… or imaginably a ‘nincompoop’. I wouldn’t know now, would I?

    This girl for example – I wont name her but she was average hight, Malaysian, black hair, dark eyes… a rather squashed up nose and unworkably large lips, much akin to a flying trout after a high impact collision with a glass wall, where the terror-stricken beholder stands on the opposing side, agape in insufferable malady as they stare wide-eyed into its face. There. I’m already judging her.

    When I first met her, or should I say first ‘saw’ her, I really didn’t have much of an opinion. ‘Never judge a book by its cover’ they always say… although I’m still bewildered as to where I first heard that from… probably some children’s show that believed a good mechanical attitude coupled with a big stupid smile will get the kid through life. Oh how cruel the media can be. But that’s quite beside the point. The thing is – everyone had already developed an opinion on her… everyone but me.

    Maybe it’s just my current problematic lack of environmental observation, or perhaps I was too engrossed in my attempts to recall last nights’ dinner. Whatever the reason, I wasn’t planning to find out any time soon. Yes. Human nature is indeed a curious thing… like a game of Chinese whispers; twisted interpretations that feed off fear. ‘Those who don’t understand, reject’… yet another befuddling quote - but this time it’s from a movie, I’m pretty sure.

    See, that’s the problem with humanity; its fear of the unknown. But does anyone think that perhaps by exploring this fear, they can clear the mist of suspicion and pointless phobia? Sometimes I really wish I did.