Filing
In another world, another dimension, she would have been revered as a Super-Bureaucrat.
She hated surprises. Her whole life had been spent pre-empting the Unexpected News, the Shocking Result, the Surprise Party. She hated the feeling of lost control one felt after being caught unawares.
She liked control.
She became a dedicated compartmentalist.
Everything and everyone could be easily labelled to her- everyone she met she was confident she could instantly divide into patterns. Patterns which consisted of certain types- The Leader, the Follower, the Politician, the Nice Person, the Annoying Person, the Bimbo, the Intellectual. Occasionally, as with all equations, there would be anomalies, and even these she managed to solve.
She particularly liked labelling those who were convinced they were beyond stereotyping. They might have thought they were 'different', she thought, slyly smiling to herself (she could almost see the Cheshire Cat grin gradually taking shape inside the dark recesses of her mind), but she knew better. There was the Follower who Led, the Annoying Intellectual, the Boring Politician. As she grew older the permutations grew. She began to think that her system was fail-safe, protecting her from having to deal with the dreaded Unique Person.
Experiences too she neatly filed away. She watched elderly relatives like a hawk, imagining the moment that she would be told of their deaths. At her beloved grandmother's funeral, she was complimented on her stoicism. She was a Pillar of Strength, they said. Little did they know that she had cried after rehearsing the moment of her stricken grandmother's death a month earlier. No Horrible Shock for her.
She thought herself fearless, since she had conquered her one fear- the Unknown.
-----------------------------
When she was little, her favourite toy had been one of those plastic balls with geometric holes, into which corresponding pegs could be slotted. She would spend hours putting the right shapes into the right holes, feeling an odd sense of power each time she heard the sharp 'plop' as the shape fell into the ball. She would lay the little plastic shapes out neatly, slotting them in turn- first, the circle, then the square, then the star, and so on. There was never a random order to things. Occasionally, when she was feeling adventurous, she would reverse the order. Eventually, she began to play with her eyes closed, pretending she was blind (therefore practising for that particular eventuality- she was nothing if not efficient).
At school, she played by herself, having been bored by all the Types she had silently observed. There was the Bully, the Popular Girl, the Momma's Boy, the Girl Who Tried to Be Friends With Everyone But Ended Up Being Bullied- having learnt all she knew of everyone (or so she thought) she didn't see any reason get to know them.
------------------------------
Her childhood play-thing soon became a life-long obsession. She had decided that she didn't want to be a Type, so each time she felt she was falling into a particular hole, she changed her shape. Like playing with her favourite toy with her eyes shut, this was another innovation in her pattern. She swerved stereotypes, triumphant in the feeling that she was Unique, that no one could file her away.
Except herself.
She had become a Square Peg in a Round Hole of her own making.
nads went at 23:06