Fingerprints

July 4th 1997, Mike and I stand on Penn’s Landing in Phili with a few thousand other people waiting for the fireworks show. The crowd is enthusiastic, entertaining and oozing pride in their city—the birthplace of independence. It was dark, it was loud, Mike and I had secured a great spot on a banister squished in between a large man who smelled of cheesesteaks (extra onion) and a young, thin, unisex person dressed in a black unitard with fluorescent green tape running down its sides. We laughed, we joked and we reveled in our freedom. Freedom of thought. Freedom of speech. Freedom to be the unique and interesting individuals we all were. Fast forward to 10:00 pm. It had been dark for quite a while at this point and the crowd was getting restless. No fireworks. We were all puzzled, the thousands of us; until word somehow spread that the fireworks were at the art museum across the city. Just why on Earth did we all end up on the wrong end of town? I think it is simply that a few thousand of us had the same idea; we just thought it should be at Penn’s Landing. It just made sense that it would be. Meanwhile across town there was probably another twenty something girl watching beautiful fireworks with her handsome boyfriend, while compressed in between a fat, smelly guy and a skinny, strangely-clad Blue Man Group reject.

They say we humans, are at the top of the evolutionary chain. What an intelligent and original bunch we are. But moments such as what we will now refer to (in a stage whisper) as the Penn‘s Landing Incident make me wonder. We were like a bunch of lemmings out there--waiting for a show that was never scheduled to happen in the first place. As one of my favorite writers, David Sedaris, would say “All of us take pride and pleasure in the fact that we are unique, but I'm afraid that when all is said and done the police are right: it all comes down to fingerprints." Though the optimist in me finds this a little dark, the realist in me thinks it’s about right.

Just look at your friends’ posts on facebook: the best ones are often great movie or song quotes, funny jokes that someone googled, or one of those fast statuses that give you suggestions you can post. Sure occasionally you’ll have the friend who will post that he was grazed by a bus (true story), or the post about your aunt who thought she threw her cigarette out the window, but really threw it into the hood of her coat (true again), but those are diamonds in the rough.

Take comfort my friends; this lack of originality isn’t always a bad thing. After weeks of throwing around possible team names for our Running Group I realized we could just search “Cool Team Names” on the internet. When I plugged that into google I came up with several links, cool team names, team names that rock, cool team names that rock and so on. A few weeks ago I wanted to bake Max a Super Mario Bros. cake for his birthday. I had some ideas, but couldn’t quite get them rolling, so I searched the internet and within seconds there was the dream cake. In fact there were dozens of Super Mario cakes. Sure these are superficial reasons to be happy that we are unoriginal, but there are some serious ones, too. As a mom and a teacher I am glad that there are books, sites, support groups and so on that promise humans this very thing. You aren’t alone, whatever your worries, someone out there has had them, too. So yes, sometimes being unoriginal is a good thing.

Still, I have spent 90% of my day trying to come up with a unique and entertaining blog and I finally had to come to terms with the fact that there might not be such a thing. Chances are some of you will find this entertaining, others lackluster, but one thing is a guarantee-there must be someone out there who has blogged about this very same thing. In these moments the only thing that makes me feels better is that you have chosen to read my blog instead of hers.