Lorie is impulsive. She can barely sit still long enough to decide what to have for breakfast before she’s whipping up her own concoction. The sad thing is, she’s a good cook. If I tried to throw something together like that, my kitchen would probably be sanctioned off as a hazardous area. Lorie, on the other hand, just grabs stuff out of the cabinet without even looking, and it all turns out great.
“I think that’s vinegar.” I’ll tell her, or “I think that went bad a few weeks ago.” But she’ll just shake her head and say “No, no! It’ll be great, I promise!”
Lorie is my cousin, which is probably the only reason I know her. I mean, Lorie is the kind of person that people should just bow down to instead of actually saying anything to. She’s amazing like that. And the coolest part is, it’s not because she’s super pretty or materialistic or anything. You look at her and she’s just any other kid. Kind of short and scrawny, with thick brown hair and blue eyes, tanned freckles on her face, and those invisible braces that they advertise all the time for on TV. What sets Lorie apart is her ability to do absolutely anything. Literally.
There isn’t a single musical instrument that Lorie can’t play. Or at least not one that she can’t pretend to play amazingly. I don’t think she’s taken violin lessons for a day in her life, and she can b.s. her way through "Simple Gifts”. But anything else- piano, guitar, clarinet, flute, drums, you name it- she could be a rock band all on her own. She could go out as a one-person marching band and blow everyone else away.
“Don’t be silly, I can’t do that.” Lorie says each time I accuse her of doing something amazingly. Like when I said she danced better than my dance instructor.
“Don’t be stupid, I can’t dance. Look at my legs. Do they look like dancer’s legs to you?” she’ll try to convince me. But then she starts dancing like she’s been at the bar for a million years. Laughing like it was an accident that she did two perfect spins in a row. Oops, look, so she can dance after all. And it’s so amazing that you think it was planned. But Lorie is really just talented that way.
And don’t even get me started on the subject of Lorie and school. Let’s just say that if she doesn’t graduate from Princeton as the valedictorian, I’ll sit down in front of a moving train. Lorie has never gotten below an A- in her life, and it’s not because she spends five hours studying each night. It’s because she has the IQ of someone who isn’t even from Earth.
“You’re not from here.” I told her once. “You’re from some other planet where they sit around and do math all day, and they like it too.”
“Now, that’s just silly.” Lorie held her head up like she was offended. “They don’t have math on my planet. They don’t even have physical forms. My ancestors are streams of soft light, and math is the least of their worries.”
But abilities aside, Lorie is your average person with beliefs and opinions. She is a very loquacious person. I told her she should be a lawyer since they love to talk, but she wants to be a doctor.
“You’d go crazy, having to be quiet and concentrate for so long.” I pointed out.
“I’d be concentrating so hard that I wouldn’t be thinking about talking.” Lorie said, as if she had it all planned out. “I don’t need people to talk to when I get bored or lonely. I’d just talk to myself.” She smiled, all proud of herself for this ingenious resolution.
“They call that schizophrenia.”
But Lorie doesn’t care what they call it. And she doesn’t care what she gets called. Lorie is the most secure, sane, pure-minded person I know, and she manages it while still being entertaining and funny. God knows that it takes so little to make her happy- she gets excited just thinking about wearing her favorite sweatshirt. She doesn't care about being the best at something or about proving herself to others, because as far as she's concerned, opinions on people are just ideas as flimsy as the people making them, and what does she care if someone doesn't like her? She doesn't want a spotlight or a pedastel, she just wants to live.
