A Tale:

My life is a slow one.

Sometimes I go for hours without seeing anyone; 'specially at night. Humans seem to forget that even though they need sleep, I might get bored with no one to look at. It wouldn't be so bad if they'd leave the lights on while they sleep; at least then I could look at objects...but they have a funny thing of needing the darkness to sleep.

But even objects can get boring after awhile. I love it when the humans move the furniture around, so I have something new to look at. Even better is when they move me to a new wall. It matters so much what one has at one's back, you know? Some walls are all silky and shiny with a recent coat of paint; so smooth you'd hardly know they're there. Others have that awful textured stuff, and make you want to itch so bad. They poke you right in the worst spots. What's really bad is when you get the head of a screw prodding you in the back, making you hang crookedly, or distorting your appearance. You would think the humans would notice it faster than they do!

I don't think they notice me. You see, I get the strangest feeling when they stare at me. I don't think they're seeing me.

Take, for instance, when the girl stands in front of me. She looks right at me, and I know it's me she's looking at, because she's so close she can't be staring at anything else. She turns from side to side, then fluffs her hair with her ringed fingers. Sometimes, when no one else is in the room, she makes funny faces at me, fluttering her eyes, and talking...only she's not really talking. She's just moving her lips and pretending. If her brother is in the room, she always asks "does this shirt make me look fat?" He always gives her the same answer, no matter what she's wearing, so I don't know why she keeps asking.

When the lady of the house stands there, she stands much closer. She puts her face right up to me (her breath smells like peppermint), and tilts back and forth until the light hits her just right. Her left hand comes up to touch the crows eyes around her eyes gently, and she sighs. Then she briefly brushes her gray hairs away from her forehead and sighs again.

What do I care about her gray hair and wrinkles? What does it matter to me if the girl looks fat? What does it benefit me if the little people in the house give me those wet, icky fingerprints all over my nice shiny self, and laugh with delight?It might be nice if they were really talking to me, but they're not. They're not - I can tell!

They are looking right at me, but they don't see me. They see the sunlight, themselves, the room around them and behind them...not me.

I live a lonely life. Never noticed, never appreciated. All they see is what I reflect.

I once hung just outside the door of the bathroom, and my lady friend hung on the wall above the sink in there. When no one was around, we would talk to one another, to pass the time. She was the first of our kind I've met who didn't get depressed over our lonely fate.

"What does it matter if they never see us?" she asked. "Are we that important? We're showing them the truth about what they look like; how would they know, if it weren't for us?"

"Well, they aren't much to look at," I replied. It was an extra dark night, and I was feeling grumpy.

"Ah, you're right there. They aren't. ...But think about what we reflect the most of."

"What?"

"Oh, come on; you know. Light. We reflect more light than anything else!"

Just the mention of light made the night more comfortable. For you must know that, to our kind, nothing feels so good on our faces as light. It just warms you out to your framework, and makes you want to sing, and shout. I had been taught, before I even left the factory, that it was light bouncing off me that would enable the humans to see themselves - and everything else I showed.

"Isn't our existence worthwhile, even if all we ever did is reflect light?" my lady friend asked.

"You're right," I agreed, grumpiness banished by her cheery purposefulness. "It is not so bad to never been noticed; not when the light is hitting me."

She sent a friendly vibration through the wall, and we both settled down to wait for the morning...and the light.