Backstory

“When I am battered and oppressed by the world that humanity has made - which is difference from the world that is was given - my primary defense, my consolation, is the absurdity of that world”

                                                                                                      Dean Koontz

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They are all around me

Those people we deem as different, strange, perhaps odd

That woman who dresses strangely, and walks head down

Unseeing along the highway

That woman, flushed and overweight

Smoking, cursing,

Fling both words and cigarette butts with abandon

That strange young man who stares intently

At those who pass by

We look at them

And quickly judge them,

Misfits

Crazy

Addicted

But today, as I watched some people who do not quite fit in

to the fabric of society

I wondered

What is his story?

What is her story?

What lies behind those behaviors we deem so odd

or even inappropriate

Perhaps she was assaulted

or abandoned

perhaps his mother told him

he would never be any good, and no one would ever love him

there is always a back story

and that person

yes that person over there we

we minimize and dismiss

may well be battered and oppress

destroyed by the absurdity of the world

that person is a precious

precious soul.