The car rattles and swerves,
charges ahead and then jerks suddenly to a halt.
I study the window.
One dirt streak, two, an almost
invisible smear from a long ago finger.
The trees part suddenly, and the
unbelievably hot August sun slants into the car, lighting up my face.
Great.
The air conditioner is on full
blast, deafening us in its pathetic attempt to compete with this 112 degree
heat. I adjust the panting vents, making sure that I have the most cool
possible, and then settle back into my seat. I whine to myself about the heat,
about the sweat, about life in general.
I turn again to the window and see
myself reflected there, dimly, with a telephone pole where my nose used to be.
Immediately I begin to critique. The curve of my neck, the line of my jaw, the
tip of my nose. I lose a staring contest with those brown eyes.
Ugh. There’s my mascara smeared.
Again.
One self-conscious pat to my hair,
one questioning eyebrow, one hopeful, half-hearted smile.
And then I laugh.
Silly Abbie! The world is flying
past, and all you can see is this one little hair that loves to torment you by
sticking straight up. All you can do is complain about your own petty troubles.
Oh Abbie, look at what you’ve been missing! The street, the people, the clouds.
Silly! You are not that important. Really. No one will notice your stupid hair.
Just get your mind off of yourself for a while. Can you do that, Abbie? Can you
think about someone else for once?
We’re all selfish. So selfish.
The guy who risks a wreck by
charging into your lane in the traffic rush. The mother who pushes away her
messy toddler, afraid of stains on her new white dress.
Me. Too busy looking at myself,
thinking about myself, whining to myself about how unfair life is to even
glance at the hobo standing there with his cardboard sign by the side of this
steaming road.
It’s Abbie, Abbie, Abbie 24/7.
Selfish.
I set up a mirror between me and
the world. I hide behind my reflected self, not letting anyone else’s cares get
through to me, past the wall of Abbie that I’ve built. I sit there,
pathetically complaining, day after day. But what if that changed?
What if I looked through the window? What if I looked
around the mirror? What if I looked past myself into the world outside? What if
I stopped caring so much about myself, and let someone tell me about their
troubles, their fears and heart aches? What if I cared about others? What if I stopped being selfish?
Maybe, just maybe, I could change
the world a little bit.
And then…then all my friends would
tell me – “Abbie, you’re the most unselfish person I know.” And I would just
smile mysteriously and reply, “I know, I know.” They would come to me with all
their problems because they would know that I would care and then they would
all beg me to write a book about myself and I would be like, “Oh no, I
couldn’t.” very humbly but I would, eventually, and it would be all about me
and how unselfish I am and people would love it and I would get rich and give
all the money to some poor babies somewhere because I am so very unselfish and
when I went to Wal-Mart my picture would be on 5 or 6 magazines and my face
would flash onto the TV every once in a while and people would walk up to me
and be like “Are you Unselfish Abbie?” and I would just smile and nod shyly and
sign a bajillion autographs and…and…
Oh.
Oh dear.
Maybe I will just write about
Selfish Abbie instead.
p.s. Does anybody else have trouble saying the word "selfish"? Every time I reread this post I ended up pronouncing it "shellfish". Oh dear.
