Kristin: There was a girl named Pike.
Pike was different from the other kids in some ways.
She had huge yellow teeth which jutted out from her face,
particularly when she was angry and curled her lips back.
Her favorite food was oatmeal, gummy and sticky and glue-like.
Actually, it was her only food.
Pike's mother would try to feed her Pop-Tarts and fish sticks,
but Pike would calmly remove the offensive food and fix
herself a bowl of oatmeal which she would strap onto her
head with Scotch tape, and then walk around the house
while she ate, masticating wildly.
Pike's manner of dress was odd.
She refused to wear any shoes,
but some ratty old platforms
she'd found in the garbage.
You couldn't tell they were ratty and old, though
as she had covered them with tinfoil
David: For these reasons alone,
Pike was ostracized at school.
The other children picked on her,
called her 'Mary' and other names,
pulled her hair and stuff.
It was difficult for them to accept her into the
peer group, given her idiosyncrasies.
Pike was different.
Often, her mother would have little fits,
when she could take Pike's strangeness no more,
ranting about 'what had she done wrong,'
and 'how she could have raised her weird daughter differently,'
and 'why did her weird daughter do this to her.'
These fits had no effect on the girl however,
Pike would merely place one hand aside each eye and stare directly ahead,
sometimes lending a swift kick in her mother's shin.
Kristin: Even the family dog, Mike,
seemed determinedly against her.
He was always nipping her feet
and chasing her into rooms where she didn't want to be.
But the last straw was the morning she woke to a pair of
aerobic shoes sitting by her bed.
Accustomed to these minor intrusions,
she stepped over them and reached for her ratty platforms.
They were gone.
At least they weren't where she left them.
She called for her mother and inquired as to their location,
but there was no answer, and there were no ratty platforms
anywhere in the apartment, only a pile of broken glass
in front of the shattered living room window.
And there on the sidewalk, four stories down,
lay here special tinfoil shoes in a tattered heap.
David: As she swept up the glass fragments,
Pike decided to leave.
This was not a difficult decision,
given that Mike was biting at her heels and barking very loudly.
She leapt over the mongrel and had just enough time to grab some
provisions and some tape, before Mike lunged.
Pike ran barefoot into the elevator, panting.
It felt good to leave.
She hated the apartment and that stupid dog.
In fact, she hated the whole city.
But she loved her shoes,
and even her yellow jutting teeth,
no matter how unpopular they were at school.
Pike walked barefoot out onto the street,
barefoot along the sidewalk,
scooped up her shiny, rumpled platforms
and continued barefoot along the road.
Kristin: As the noises of the city faded,
she discovered a whole new world,
a lot of green, and room for bird sounds.
Cars didn't drive so fast,
and children played happily.
They didn't seem to be full of Pop-Tarts and fish sticks.
On and on she walked, and soon came to a stream.
On and on she walked through the stream,
against the current, her platforms dangling from her shoulder.
As dusk gathered and night began to fall,
the sounds of greenness enveloped her.
She caught sight of that for which she had been searching:
a big square entirely filled with grass.
She then knew what she had been born to do.
Calmly she stepped out of the stream and
into her shoes and walked towards it.
She poured some oats right out of the packet, into the
bowl and taped herself to it.
Slowly, she walked to the middle of the field,
looked up to the stars and masticated wildly.
What blood type do you have?
David: I don't know. I've never been-- I don't think I've ever--
Kristin: There are only a few. You could just say one.
David: O
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