Every now and then, shallow-brained people might come your way and try (or pretend to try) to learn how to be deep. They might begin testing their own skills at thinking with their souls. They are going to choose you because they know you have some really deep thoughts sometimes, but prefer not to show them off.

It did happen to me one thursday, not long ago. The socialite, the fun-sized beauty, future trophy wife. The example of a trouble-free soul. Se shows up and makes sure there is nobody close watching her, and yet she has some doubt behind her eyelids. At this pointt, I'm not sure if her intention is going to be to listen carefully to what I might tell her and learn from it, or to fish for a couple of phrases in my speech that she can remember later, so they will add "philosopher" and/or "poet" to the list of attributes people think she has. Either way, I have got nothing to lose for just answering some random silly question my own way. Only this turns out to be a bit deeper than I had imagined, to be honest.

"Well..." she says. "I was wondering... what you want to be. Like, if you could be something right now that has an effect on your future. Like, happiness or all that stuff"

I smile at her and take a second to reply.

"I want to be a loose sentence" I let out. "I want to be the person who is always saying the most stupid things. All the time. And, once in a while, let out a well-conceived sentence, or a smart short speech. Something so swift, you'd miss it if you blinked. Around me, there could be many people, most of them silently wishing I would keep my thoughts to myself, if only for this once. But one Person caught that slipped Phrase, and at home that night, they will be turning my words around their heads, with their own voices saying them instead of mine."

"Ultimately, they will become adults, and my name won't even sound familiar. But still that Phrase they once heard in their childhood will stay safe in an invisible locket hanging upon their chest. Its words will be as familiar as a mother's voice, and never really lose their meaning. Then one day, the locket is opened."

"You know how the cities with the prettiest beaches are always the ones to suffer the fiercest storms? A Person's spirit can behave in a scarily similar way. Eventually, a storm may come over this Person's soul and threaten to swallow them up. That's the time when one old Sentence comes through from the corner of their brain. Like a thick branch stuck to the ground in a fast-streaming river. Like a lonely tree rising majestically from the flooded land. The Person will only have the Phrase to hold on to. And they will, with all of their might and strenght left."

"And I guess that is my answer. I want to be the forgotten author of the surviving tree. And when the summer comes back inside that opressed Spirit, I would really like Them to make just a little effort to remember who told them once what they needed, instead of what they wanted to hear. Hopefully, they will know it was that annoying talkative kid in class who saved their lives without doing a thing. They will know where to find me, because I will never leave this place. And they will come, I hope, to say thank you and run away again."

"Wow" she said after a short silence. "I give up. You're just like way too... special?" Maybe she was searching a different word. Weird? Freak? Who knows. She stood up rapidly mumbling something I couldn't hear and half-jogged her way to the door without ever looking over her shoulder. I sat there laughing to myself, proud of how I made this popular kid dust off her unused brain for enough time to wonder what the word "Majestically" meant.