But Carrot Tops Are Green

Nine years old and deprived of my visual senses, I grip the rough, cold hand of an unknown man, hoping the faith I have in them is not misplaced. Gravel shifts beneath my feet as I drop from the final step onto what I assume is the street below, the rumbling hum of engines now catching my ear. The world is different when you’re young and blindfolded, everything seems so loud. I feel her presence beside me, comforted by the fact that my much older partner in crime is still with me. We’re on this ride together, just the two of us, and that, at least, is something. BG and her mini me, in it to the end. Her nervous voice breaks the white noise of the outside world, asking where they are taking us, but her pleas are to no avail. There is no verbal answer to her queries, merely a mild increase in pace.

The surface seems to flatten now, just for a moment, before suddenly shifting once again to a somewhat padded terrain. It’s soft, and damp, and little parts of it tickle my ankles...grass? I hear the gentle rustling of leaves as a gentle breeze smooths over my face, my skin. It smells different here and when the hand that held mine finally lets go I am at peace. Though I know not where I am, I feel safe and free in a way that I had never known before.

The panicked, “Wait...come back! Where are we? Bree, stay close to me. Don’t move”, from beside me, suggests I’m the only one who feels this way.

A word of warning, when you tell a child who is blissful and excited about a new experience not to do something, it’s going to be all they want to do, and I can tell you right now, I was a cheeky child.

Young, and free from fear and doubt, I giggle at her anxious protests. I back away, open my arms wide while closing my eyes even tighter beneath the blindfold, turn and fly. My arms as wings guide me to balance as I run, laugh, and twirl in this open space - looking back, I’m thankful it was so open. I experience the world in a new way and I love every second of it, my own joy drowning out the frightened calls of my older performance companion. While her years learning the dangers of the world weigh on her, causing her to bend to caution’s will, my own innocence and inexperience gives me a precious gift, pure unadulterated exhilaration.

All too soon the time to lift the blindfold to my brow comes along, revealing the open field of a city park. The glare blinds us momentarily but as the world around us clarifies what I had already known by my childhood intuition becomes all too clear, we were never in any real danger.

Every strange and wonderful character building activity draws me closer to the fictional body I am tasked to inhabit, though ever further from the children of the real world. There are not many around me, at this young age, who have trialled blindness for but a moment to gain some small insight into the experience of those who cannot see. There are even fewer who have run staggering from a burning building to catch the perfect shot, or rehearsed a hugging hold on a tree they would be torn from, and there are fewer still who return to school with their hair a brightened red, shorn short with intentionally unkempt jagged edges.

When the other children call me carrot top, I retort with a somewhat ironic, “Well that’s ridiculous, carrot tops are green”, before strutting away to enjoy my own company or find the other social outcasts of the primary school grounds.

The life of a child actor often lends itself to separating oneself from the crowd, with that out-of-place state quite quickly becoming the norm. So many little children want only to fit in but the mundane reality of the popular personalities and those aspiring to be them, cannot compare to wonderful oddities of cameras, sets and strange adults with their unusual mannerisms and brilliant depictions of perfect comfort within their own atypical selves.

No, I think I’ll enjoy my time seeking out those who veer off from the norm, now and long after my time in the spotlight has faded. There’s nothing wrong with living and feeling a little on the outside always. The outside is what makes life most interesting.