silverthorne

Surprisingly, even though she features in this, it isn't even about the mate all that much.

Most everyone has done those little word/number-association brain teasers, I'm sure. You know, the ones where a person leads you through a string of word associations like 'think of a fruit that starts with an 'O', or else 'Pick a number, divide it by 'x' amount, juggle it a few times and...'

If they're well designed, and, barring a mathematical error on a participant's part, or the one answer that 'most' people don't think of, you can pretty much bet by the sequence of questions that you'll arrive to one, maybe two possible answers.

I remember doing one of those off a TV show, with mate right next to me, also doing it. Of course, we kept each answer to ourselves until the end. It was word association, so at the end of it, there were two possible answers--Kangaroo and Koala, with the most common answer, according to the guy doing the sequencing, being 'kangaroo'.

Mate came up with the most common answer.

I, uh, had the 'bad form' to come up with koala. Yep you got it--I told her what my answer was, and she freaked out on me, saying things like 'Well, excuse me for no being special enough!' which left me going WTF?, especially since it was back before things were getting ugly between us. It was the most bizarre ten minutes of my life, because I was getting a combination of 'how dare you buck the system!' and 'but I wanted to be the special one, and how come you are instead of me?!'

And it boggled me. A lot.

And it also occurred to me that a lot of people think that way--that combined outrage of 'why you and why not me and don't even start to think you're special because of it'...

You know, even if your own opinion on the matter is '...but I'm not special. I just came up with a different answer.' (which was pretty much my attitude on the matter).

It still boggles me. Especially when I come to the realization that in order for these people to become 'special', they would also have to set themselves up for getting abuse from other people who didn't pass the 'special' test.

Now, with that state of mind, why would you want it in the first place?

Especially since it doesn't make you so much as 'special', as just in possession of a slightly different thinking process in a limited arena.