The Firefly Field Theory

|7| Everybody's Prone to Epic Failiocitis: Part III

PART III:

“Why should I tell you? Haven't I told you enough already?”
“Ahh come-on you can tell me if it makes you feel any better”. I can’t believe I said such a cliché thing.
“No it won’t make me feel better it will make me feel bitter” she retorts and then after a moment she says,“Tell me something embarrassing about you first.”

And so the best I can come up with is, “I exist.”

We both laugh at this. Then I think of embarrassing things about me, there happen to be too many to choose from.

“Once upon a time a bully named Steve dumped me into the trash bin.”That should do the trick.

She stays quite and then shakes her head unsatisfied.

“I almost drowned in a lake once.”, I offer hoping that this was embarrassing enough to please her.

“Have you ever had an idiosyncrasy in regards to something, like the one Omi has for this field?” she presents before I can tell her of that time some kid stole my tampons.

I take a moment to memorize all the thoughts that from in my brain and all the thoughts that vanish in it. I drown in my atypical opinions and weird theories.

I swim though all the things I have had idiosyncrasies for.

But I can’t choose until I realize for the second time today that I am sitting on my ass in a field and I remember the dream I had.

 I think it was wrong for me to laugh at Omis’ theory because I have my own, a peculiar thought that now that I think of it, I would find exceptionally hard to explain to someone without making them laugh. I don’t even know Omi but I can imagine exactly how he would have felt. Alone. The way I have felt all the time.

I think of the firefly field theory. I imagine what Bravo would say or do once I told her. I imagine the twinkling fireflies depicting my life and her life and everybody else’s live swarm around us. And shine and vanish then shine and vanish. It would be totally fair if she laughed because I laughed too. Because we don't expect the vial and disgusting human conscience to be deep or thoughtful very often. And when we do come across someone who has such a mind we laugh at them but a piece of us laughs at us. We laugh at how silly it was for them to assume such weird things but a piece of us laughs at how silly we were to assume such a thing.

I finally take the plunge, I tell her. Partly because I want to know what she would say to this and partly because I want to know what Omi said to her. That hurt her. Her!. Miss tough guy.

So I bundle up my courage, telling myself honestly that I am not embarrassed, I may not speak my mind a lot but that doesn’t mean I can’t. I tell her my idea of the momentary perfection of life being much like a field with a billion fireflies. And how their sporadic glows symbolize the good times and the dimming of their light is the bad time. How that one in a million instant where all of the fireflies glow up is like the epitome of life’s beauty and perfection and how when that instant ends everything is back to imperfection.

She listens to everything with great intent and to my surprise she doesn’t laugh, not once, maybe my theory wasn’t as silly as Omis’ or maybe she has suffered once because of her ignorance or maybe there is a difference in sharing an idiosyncratic thought with an adult and a twelve year old kid. When I finish she stands up and stares blankly at the unpopulated circle of chemicals symbolizing the absence of damns standing proud between the grassy festivities of the numerous damns.

The gentle warm breeze rustles the untamed fringes of the grass. As the breeze floats across my face it feels hot and damp, like the grass is respiring like the two of us. Like the damns people are giving are living breathing things. Like they were struggling to be noticed until Omis’ theory made us see them in a different light. Or maybe everybody and everything around me is just being too overly melodramatic. And exhaling deep sighs is a symptom of it.