If you were to go on Google maps right now and scroll over to the Sahara desert, and then zoom in and zoom in and then zoom in a little bit more, you would stumble on a town called Accident.  The name, while funny, is the perfect representation of the town. Decades ago, an explorer was wandering around the desert hallucinating, as one does when one is going around dehydrated as a humpless camel. The nameless explorer stumbled on the spring that is now the town well and decided to name the town after his fortune, if you can call it that. Well if you were to zoom out just a little bit on Accident you would see a sea of gray. With one exception. (An oddity among a sea of normalities) In the sea of gray you would see one dot of color. I'm not going to be able to tell you what the color of that dot would be, as the dot changes colors regularly. The particular dot I’m talking about is a person. The dot is different from every other bland dot. When the rusty bells in the bell tower that are covered in a thick layer of dust strike 3 and all the other kids run out in their yards and bounce a ball, the colorful dot does not. As the balls echo on the ground in a symphony of similarity, there is one different sound. Among the hollow round noise of bounces, there is the scratch of chalk. But the chalk sets the tone for the entire piece. Like the drums. On the block there are 9 gray houses, all tragically the same except for one. One house is covered with splashes of paint. Parents tell their children to stay away from the house. But they don't. There always seems to be kids lingering around the picket fence, daring each other to touch the house. When the fleet of children leaves every morning on their gray bikes to school, one bike strays from the streets the other children ride and goes into the alleyways. The sound of the tires hitting bumps echos in the street, and people are frightened. They are scared of difference. They are scared of the scratch of chalk on the street. They are scared of the house on the block. They are scared of the tires in the alleyways. But mostly they are just scared of the sound of difference in their symphony of similarity. But contrary to what most people think, the dot doesn't mind. She likes being different. She can’t think of anything more painful than just being like everyone else. After all, she would say, would you read a story about someone who was just like everyone else? The people in town need someone to criticize, to hang on to like a life preserver. If it wasn't her, it would be somebody else. She loves being different. The different ones are the ones that are important. She lives a perfectly happy life. One day she will move out of the town. She will go. But she will always remember where she started. Who she was in the beginning. The trace of a smile on her face as her lips move. (“ An oddity in a sea of normalities” )       

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