| The Search for Intelligent Life: How I came to terms with Humanity It all started in eighth grade when I began volunteering at a local history museum. As a �History Specialist� I greeted visitors while wearing a replica of a Victorian Ladies Walking Costume. Inside the museum, my huge brown dress and feathered hat were not remarkable. Outside the museum doors, however, I was a spectacle. Children pointed or occasionally saluted, young people my own age gawked, tourists snapped pictures as I walked by, and some even asked to take pictures with me. As I posed with families, we laughed together at the absurdity of my outfit, and sometimes we started to talk. I answered questions about my dress and the history surrounding it, or we may have merely chatted about the weather or a nice place to eat lunch. Wearing that dress made me different than the other men and women on the street�we were no longer total strangers. We had made a connection. I have since outgrown the dress and am forced to seek the connection in other ways. I drive around town with all my windows down, singing along to old German pop music, just to get smiles and guffaws from people in other cars. Pulling into a parking lot, singing along, I�ve actually had a German tourist approach me and talk to me about the band. Another time, my best friend and I ran past the sporadic dog-walkers on a snow-covered beach in early April and dove into Lake Michigan. Most of my body was numb, and I was bruised from floating ice chunks, but it was worth it to have a conversation with a middle-aged woman who watched the laughable scene. She asked if we planned to do it again the next year; I won�t let her down. Even the simplest act can do it. I went to a store and purchased fourteen boxes of Jell-O and one whisk. The man behind the counter looked at it all and laughed. We started talking, and he asked if I�d seen the latest Geico commercial. He told me all about it, and it was really uplifting to have a conversation with the kind of person most people just ignore. I�ve worn my Homecoming dress to the grocery store. When the waitress asks if I want dessert, I order toast. I carried a cardboard cutout of Annikin Skywalker around town and photographed him eating at Burger King, pumping gas, and shopping at the dollar store. I buy sixty-three cents worth of gas. I pogo-stick down a popular jogging trail. Sometimes I�m alone, and sometimes my friends join me, but every time I make a connection. Store clerks, the kids who bag groceries, waiters, and total strangers are not just part of the scenery. They�re human beings, and I�m proving to them that I am too. |