Wonder Friday
Three kids, about the age of 13, sit on a log under a blue sky perfectly dotted with clouds. The log stretches across a narrow creek that soothes the children with its soft trickles. The boy on the far right looks up at the sky and says, "Here's a deep thought. Ready, guys?" The others nod vigorously. "Maybe, we all see colors differently. Maybe my blue looks like your green but we both call it 'blue' because we were told that it was called blue. We would never discover this fact, ever. Because you just can't describe color. Think about trying to tell a blind person what yellow looks like. You can't say, 'Yellow looks like the sun and sunflowers' because they don't know what those things look like."
"Do you think that if we somehow found out that we see colors differently, it would change everything?" says the girl on the left.
"No, I don't think I would really matter," the kid on the right answers. "Hey, Joy, what's going on in your head? You haven't said a word." The girl in the middle looks up. She hasn't said a word for the whole hour they had been sitting here.
"Well, I'm thinking about a lot of things and they're really hard to explain."
"Go on! Tell us," The girl on the left says.
"Ok," Joy starts, "Maybe there's other people out there just like us. I'm not talking about space, but here on earth. There could be another person that is exactly like me and we'll never meet. Or there might be parallel universes and everyone in those universes do the exact same thing as us at the exact same time. Or maybe, the people in the parallel universe are just a little behind us, waiting to see what we'll do next." She lets the others dwell on that thought before before moving on to the next.
"Time might not exist. Everything could be happening all at once. If this is true, time travelling would never work. So this gives us all the more reason to live in the moment. You always hear those stories of people who find out that they only have months to live and they go do all their dreams. As they say, you don't need to find out that you're dying to start living. People need to start living by that phrase and stop living on their electronics. We need to spend more time with each other because life doesn't last for ever." She stops again to let this sink in.
"Maybe, when you imagine things it's real. We could be creating something that is going to happen in one of those parallel universes. Or, we could be feeling what is going on in other parallel universes. Or, our thinking could be something completely unrelated to any of that." Joy take s a breath and starts again.
"I have been wondering how many thoughts you can think at once before you forget one. Also, how much of our life is being forgotten. Is all this just going to waste? Will I never remember this talk?" She stops.
"Maybe, sad music isn't really sad. It all depends on how if feels. Slow music could make you happy for all I know. Music is linked very tightly to our memories and thoughts. When you hear slow music, it could make you think of a happy time, so sad music isn't really sad." She stops again.
"Our minds could be connected somehow and we could be hearing each other's thoughts but our mind just tunes out the thoughts of others. We probably can speak to each other with our minds but we would have to learn to turn on the listening side of our brain." She continues on, stopping between each thought. When Joy finishes long after because she doesn't feel like going on, the others seem upset.
"I have plenty more thoughts going on, but I'm getting tired and thirsty," she explains.
"Alright, then. Let's go home," says the boy and he stands up and walks across the log and to the bank of the river. Joy and the other girl follow with ease. They have done this many times and it's routine for the trio to come out here after school on Fridays for hours at a time. They call Friday "Wonder Friday" because all they do is wonder about things. They always enjoyed living in the country, because there's so much nature and they love to go explore or just sit around talking about the mysteries of life. They walk silently to the edge of the woods. This is very unusual, but now all they want to do is think about what Joy had said.
The kids walk down the road stepping on sticks and dry leaves. None of them wears shoes when they go out into the woods on Fridays. It helps them think. They stop in front of a white house with roses growing by the porch steps. The boy splits off from the group.
"See you guys at school!" he shouts from the door of his house. After a wave or two, he steps inside and the screen door slams behind him. The two girls continue walking down the the burning hot road. Their feet start to hurt from the heat, so they step onto the grass on the side of the road. The dew on the grass cools down their feet instantly.
"It's amazing that the road is so hot. It's almost six o'clock and dark outside. I wonder how the road keeps in the heat." says the other girl. Joy shrugs. She doesn't know. They walk to Joy's house in silence. Joy says her goodbyes and walks down the pathway to her house. Joy stands in the doorway and takes one last look at her friend before stepping inside and closing the door without making any noise.
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