Topic: Perspective
Your own point of view is only one small piece of the giant jigsaw puzzle. I was in the dentist?s office today and she has an aquarium filled with probably two dozen fish. As I observed the fish, their existences seemed incredibly boring. They traveled the same paths time and again. Occasionally, the path would vary, but then the repetition began again. While it was a relaxing view, it wasn?t anything to write home about. And here I am writing about it.
Now, turn that picture around. Are those fish observing us waiting in the waiting room? What stories could they tell about us? Say that mom has just brought her daughter in for her first visit to the dentist. The daughter doesn?t know enough to not like dentists. The mother knows plenty and frets the whole time. Many exam rooms are not large enough for mom to come in with the patient; so, she waits. Her foot taps nervously and occasionally she jumps nervously at an unfamiliar sound. The fish could tell us more.
I once read a short story or essay prepared as a homework assignment. It was written from the perspective of a boot. It was quite entertaining. The boot has been long forgotten in the closet. One day he sees light. The boot practically begs to be removed from the confines of his dark prison. The only problem there was that the boot must pay a price for that freedom.
He is twisted and turned and poked and prodded until his owner?s foot found comfort in the body of the boot. His face was slapped against grass and pavement as the bully walked to his destination. I?ve elaborated some here, but you get the general idea. In the end, the boot ended up on the bottom of the lake. He was still happily relating stories from his soggy grave.
In typing this column today, I think telling a story from the point of view of the cursor would be very cool. The poor cursor leads a quiet existence of blinking away the hours until someone else takes control. The cursor, even then, leads a very limited life in moving up and down and side to side one space at a time. What happens to the cursor when we perform a drag and drop action for a cut and paste. The cursor gets to open his mouth as wide as possible and taste our text for just a moment before we make him spit it all out again.
Even better, the crisp white piece of paper that takes pride in his appearance can experience quite a trauma when we pollute its surface with crayon or ink. The paper has decided that he actually likes the feel of watercolors on his skin. The paintbrush tickles just a bit. On the other hand, he can?t stand the daisy wheel printer that tap, tap, taps all across his forehead. It is no wonder that paper always has a headache. Now, the eraser is his friend because even though he can be abrasive, he tries so hard to remove some of that dirt that the bad human has left on us.
I hope to leave you today with some ideas on different approaches to the everyday story. I provided some very short examples as illustrations. The rest is up to you. Here's one...I mentioned the piece of the jigsaw puzzle. What's his story?