Shells

I have always liked lonely people. To make friends with them yes, but not only this. I liked to be the the first to go into their room, after the awkwardly monumental conversation that took us from chatting at school to fledgling friends. I liked seeing the tiny world created by someone with so much time on their hands, not directed by a herd of others, not consumed with who liked whom. Model Walmarts made of Legos, bottles of homemade ink from walnut hulls. Volumes written on Viking lore. The creations of an undiluted mind. The unexpected colors of the mind itself! There is a paradox to sociability, people get louder sometimes even as they become less themselves. This is not always true. There are fascinating loud and sociable people and quiet ones who only watch tv day in and day out.

More often than not, though, the magic lay in the silence, the awkwardness. It was in the angles that would not be smoothed, in the person they would be erupting from the youthful shell.  I was eternally new in town and full of angles of my own. They were less obvious but completely immovable and it was a relief to have friends who would not be provoked when they stumbled on them like tree roots. We could do much for each other with the empathy bought by experience, and the knowledge the world does not end with making a fool of oneself.