Why put it so high? You see, it’s my mother’s. She’s always looking at it. She insists on having a weekly ‘Trivial Pursuit’ contest - killingly boring I know, but it’s a ‘family ritual’. Oh, that reminds me. Here’s a fun fact: did you know that though ostriches lay the largest eggs on land, the whale shark lays the largest eggs in the WORLD! Fourteen inches in diameter! I wouldn’t want that coming out of me. Anyway, I think it’s cheating, which I know you don’t like, and the rulebook says it’s cheating too, but the silly old woman won’t stop using it. It’s not fair. Life’s not fair. I’m getting off topic now. Well, the encyclopaedia’s first definition of ‘identity’ was ‘the fact of being who or what a person or thing is.’ But that’s not really it, is it? No. Kind of confuses things, doesn’t it? “…per quem omnia facta sunt…” Now hang on, no need to get irritated. I can find it, just give me a second. Here we go. Definition two: ‘the collective aspect of the set of characteristics by which a thing is definitively recognizable or known.’ So if I stand naked in front of a mirror, is that who I am? That’s what it means, right, ‘characteristics’? But suppose I didn’t like what I see? Do you like what you see? Is that why people wear clothes? To cover up their identity? Why should people cover up who they are, so they can fit in? People are a bit like eggs.They hide in their little shells until at some unsuspecting point in time, they pop out. What you don’t understand is that there are so many types of egg. Big ones, small ones. Brown ones, white ones. Then you have different categories of eggs - quail eggs, whale eggs, chicken eggs, ostrich eggs. Hey, didn’t Job have a gripe about ostriches ( species struthiocamelos, which is of course part of the struthionidea family)? Yeah, it went something like ‘She leaveth her eggs in the earth, and warmeth them in dust, unmindful that a foot may crush them, that some wild animal may trample them.’ Reminds me of my upbringing.
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