Sometimes, I look back at the things that made me who I am today.
Like the first time I rode a bike. The first time I fell off that bike.
The first time I made someone laugh. The first time I got someone in trouble.
I guess that most of the things that shaped who I am, I can't even remember. But sometimes I look back at the things I do remember, and wonder what else will happen to me before I'm 15. Before I'm 20. Before I'm 80.
I don't actually remember the first time I made someone laugh. But knowing me, I must have done something stupid, like walk into a wall.
But I remember the first time that I decided to devote time to making those around me smile.
It was a rainy day, as it often is in Wales, and it was breaktime at school. We had three breaks during the day; a small one first, then a longer lunch one, then a short one again later on.
It was the first breaktime, I think. It was a long time ago, so I can't be sure.
I remember exactly where I was standing, within a metre's accuracy. I was in the senior playground, so I must have been grade three, four or five.
Two of my friends were fighting again. They claimed to be best friends, but everyday they would have vicious fights, scratching and spitting and kicking and screaming.
It kinda hurt me, having to be the one to play psychologist. Everyone else tried, but I was the only one who could calm them down. Every lunchtime, I would take them aside, one at a time, and they would talk to me as they walked.
I remember trying to get them to see things from the other's point of view. And at the end of the day, they still wouldn't make up, and they would go home vowing never to speak to the other again.
But when they came to school the next day, they were arm in arm and old friends, as if yesterday had never happened. Then they would fight again, it was usually over the most pettiest of things, and once again I'd have to clean it all up.
It baffled me how no-one else seemed to notice anything. No-one would comment on how, the very next day, it would be fine. I think it as because they did the same with their own friends, albeit on a much more subtle level.
One of these days, those two friends of mine were sitting against a wall, having had one of their rare truces being formed a few minutes earlier. They were still kind of bitter, and wouldn't really look at each other.
My third friend was sitting down as well, and I was standing up facing them.
No-one was smiling. Just three small, grim faces looked up at me disinterestedly.
And that's when I had
the lightbulb moment. I cleared my throat dramatically, and pulled the corniest 'knock knock' joke I knew. No-one laughed. But there was a slight curving of their mouths.
I yanked up my third friend by the arm, and whispered my genius plan in her ear. By now I had fully captured the others' attention.
For the rest of that break, we did everything we knew, whether it was funny or not. From doing the 'Judy and Punch', as in pretending to slap each other over the head with frying pans, to acting out the most elaborate on-the-spot plays, to spinning around and around till we fell flat on our bums.
It worked. We garnered a small audience of five or six to watch us, and by the end of the week we had our spectators in tears of laughter.
I liked it when I made others laugh. In retrospect it was almost like I was wearing a mask, a mask that I myself didn't even realise I had adorned.
From then on, I would do little things, I would run around in circles for no reason, be silly to make them laugh. And I think, that as time went on, I assumed that mask more firmly. It became who I was, and who I was became it.
It isn't a mask anymore. It's a part of me now. Like that scar I have on the back of my hand, from when I fell off that bike.
That mask is who I wanted to be. And without realising it, it's how I became. Because no one is born with a set personality - our feelings and our experiences mold and shape us like clay. And at the end of our lives, we will become a unique sculptre.
Yes, that silliness and jokingness started out of curiosity. Out of a want to make the world a little brighter for others.
But now, now I think I wouldn't change who I am for the world.
~Shining Sunlight~
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