A few days ago my dad brought home a lot of cherries. He shouldn’t have bought a lot because it turns out that only mum and I eat them. Though I passed a cursory glance over each of them before sticking them into my mouth, I realised that what we see can be deceiving.
It looked succulent, a deep purpley red colour and so I gave it a pass in my short quality check test. Just as I popped it into my mouth and bit into it, squishing juice everywhere, I realised I had made a mistake. It tasted horrendous, as if someone had injected mud into the centre (Yes I know what mud tastes like. I had a fun childhood). I was speaking to Rosaline about it, and she said something that dragged me down memory lane. Rewind to..
Primary School Assembly, Year 3
I always enjoyed assemblies in which a class gave a presentation or a teacher did something interesting. I remember once Mr Bristol was going to be taking the assembly. After the announcements were read out and the general business dealt with, he walked onto stage and began talking.
“I know it is against the rules to eat in assembly, but the head teacher here has said I can. Just this once.”
We were all curious. I sat there stuffing my face with polos.
The head teacher walked over to him, a tin and fork in hand. She opened the tin, stuck the fork inside and fed whatever it was to Mr Bristol. Those children who were sitting at the front, and so had a better view, let out noises of disgust. “Ewwwww!”
“What is he doing?”
“That’s so disgusting!”
“She’s feeding him dog food!”
“I’m going to be sick, how can he eat that stuff?”
As news spread to the back of the hall, the disgust and a fair share of disbelief got louder and louder and louder. The head teacher continued feeding the other teacher. As the contents of the tin were about to finish, he began talking again.
“If any of you would also like to eat some, please come to the front.” He was replied by silence. Not a single child spoke. He pointed to a girl sitting at the front. “Do you think what I was eating is nice?”
“No! I would never eat it,” the girl replied.
He pointed at a boy, “Would you ever eat it?”
The boy replied as the girl had done, “No. I’d not even touch dog food!”
The teacher smiled. “Many of you think that the tin I was eating from contained dog food in it. It didn’t.” He proceeded to remove the label off the tin and revealed another label below that showed it was actually pineapple. Everyone gasped. We had been fooled completely. It wasn’t even April yet. “The lesson I want you all to take away from today’s assembly is that we should never judge anything or anyone on what it or they look like.”
*****
Each and everyone of us portrays a certain image. We all hide behind masks so that others don’t take advantage of us, or know what really goes on beneath our skins. It is usually a protective measure. Only very few people see us with our masks off and barriers down, but even then some of them may not see our naked skin. We are quick to judge. A person that doesn’t conform to the norms, or doesn’t look good is left out, marginalised and the last one to be picked. But the surface is never really real as we only see that which our eyes are capable of seeing. People cover themselves up with make-up to hide the cracks, others distract attention from their sorrow-filled eyes by their beautiful smiles and some people walk tall even when they are broken.
I’d like to end this post with another incident from the past. Back in high school, year 10, the first year of GCSEs a guy dramatically changed. I wasn’t really friends with him at the time, but he was in my maths class and so we occasionally spoke. He was known as being a social, easy to get-along-with type of person, but as time went on he became less and less so. His friends started falling out with him because he no longer took part in their past-times and no longer shared their interests. At lunch times he would sit in the school library immersed in a book or would walk aimlessly around the school building lost in his own mind. “Neek” they called him, “they’re just stupid exams and still 2 years away. Why is he being like this?” He became quieter and quieter and quieter. No-one knew why, and so people used it as an excuse to spread rumours and taunt him. He wouldn’t reply. One day we discovered his mother had been involved in a serious car accident and was in intensive care. The penny had finally dropped. “Oh s**t, I didn’t know.” A bit late for saying sorry don’t you think?
Unless you’ve crawled inside the other person’s skin, taken a look around, seen the world from their eyes and have some sort of idea about them, the real them and not the mask they wear, be careful of what you say or do. You will never know. Just like they don’t know about you.
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Title: You’re a better man than I – The Yardbirds
Picture of cherries Dee taken from here
Picture of pineapple taken from here
Picture regarding masks was one sent to me by a friend. I do not have a link for it.
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