Sorry, Not Sorry
By Myla Derry
We often say sorry without even thinking,
It’s become a reflex, just like blinking.
We blurt it out before we know what we’ve done,
Whether we’ve said something mean or bumped into someone.
A single word holds so many meanings,
It could be nonchalant or full of feelings.
You cannot take back words that have been spoken.
Can five letters repair something that has been broken?
A crack.
Running deeper than the eye can see.
A missing piece that is never quite filled.
Impossible to rebuild.
We learn to say sorry, like learning lines for a play,
It could just be said to make an argument go away.
We perform remorse since we’re expected to,
But if an apology’s foreseen, does that make it true?
Often we wait for this powerful word,
Yet sometimes the word will remain unheard.
This line you’ve rehearsed you cannot say,
Leading to silence ; day after day.
Imagine if sorry vanished overnight,
Would kindness disappear from sight?
People bump into you, then walk straight past,
Hurt that remains after the moment has passed.
Or perhaps without sorry we’d have to show our regret,
Not just a word to make the past forget.
No untrue promise or a convenient lie,
Just actions that speak when words run dry.
Sorry can carry so many feelings, or none at all,
We repeat it, obeying an unwritten rule.
One convention : “Oh, I’m sorry,”
“It’s okay, please, don’t worry.”
A word may begin what forgiveness can do,
But untying the knots is up to you.
Editor’s Note: Through a series of carefully crafted rhyming couplets, Myla transforms how our automatic ‘sorry’ sounds to our own ears. Her choice of breaking rhyme in the lines “A crack. / Running deeper than the eye can see,” is particularly powerful for her audience, a departure from the convention she has set for herself.
Default
By Vivi Li
Three decades ago nobody knew what it meant to be normal.
Three years ago, I wore my shirt backwards.
Three minutes ago, someone decided that was a problem.
~
Before someone invented normal, the world was ridiculously ordinary. Or perhaps it was extraordinary. People danced in the rain, painted stars on their shoes, and climbed trees they weren’t supposed to climb. Children wondered about wondering. Old men sang to the birds. Nobody stopped to ask whether any of it was normal.
I remember walking to school with my shirt backwards, buttons pressing against my spine. Sunlight scattered across the world as morning began and the morning breeze brushed against my skin. A bird perched on a branch and sang a song no one would ever imagine a bird singing. It was beautiful.
I liked the world just the way it was.
The tilted tree. The girl who always wore mismatched socks. The boy who always laughed when no one else did. Everyone belonged to a world where no one judged or stared.
I didn’t know that strange or weird existed. I didn’t know there was a way to do things ‘correctly’. I didn’t know people could look at the same world and divide it into two halves: one for normal things, the other for unusual things.
I didn’t know there was a line. Or maybe it had always been there, waiting for someone to point it out.
~
Then, somebody invented normal.
Perhaps normal began as an innocent word. Someone noticed that people often did similar things, enjoyed similar hobbies and followed similar routines. They needed a word to describe what was common, so they invented one.
At first, normal was only an observation. It didn’t mean that anything else was wrong.
But what if common was simply how the world had always been? When did being common become something people were supposed to be?
Children started comparing their clothes, interests, abilities and even their personalities. They wondered who was normal and how they could be normal. Yet nobody could explain what being normal truly meant.
Gradually, people decided that instead of normal describing what was common, it became something that described what was acceptable.
We started noticing which behaviours made others laugh and changed the way we acted. Parents, adults and teachers taught children what was considered acceptable, passing down rules no one remembered inventing. People started copying what everyone else did because fitting in was a lot easier than standing out. Eventually, nobody questioned the rules because following them felt natural.
~
Every day, I wore my shirt backwards anyway. Every day, I felt more eyes following me and more whispers tugging at my sleeves.
Until one day, someone said something.
“Hey, why are you wearing your shirt backwards?” asked the girl who used to wear mismatched socks.
“I like the feel of it,” I said.
The girl laughed and walked away.
I looked down at my shirt. The buttons were still pressing against my spine. I felt the fabric. It was still the same. Was there something wrong? I looked around at everyone else’s shirts. They were all the right way round.
The next day, I wore my shirt backwards again, then I thought about what happened yesterday. How everyone else wore it the same way. How the girl laughed after I gave my reason. So I wore it the right way. I accepted the idea of being normal not because I understood it, but because I wanted to avoid being judged.
For the first time, I began trying to become someone else.
~
But then, one morning, normal disappeared.
I opened the door and found that the streets were a riot of colour, not just divided into black and white. People were laughing, dancing, singing and climbing. Children asked questions that even adults couldn’t answer. The girl who used to wear mismatched socks wore different shoes. Nobody stared. Nobody whispered. Nobody seemed afraid of standing out.
I put my shirt on backwards and stepped across the threshold.
The girl passed me. She looked at my shirt, then continued walking. No reaction. No comment. No judgement. She accepted it, without needing it to be acceptable.
For a moment, it was wonderful.
Then the noise grew. Everybody wanted to do whatever they pleased, all at once. Nobody agreed on how to share anything. People spoke over one another, and every interruption turned into an argument. Without shared expectations, even something simple became difficult.
I’d wanted normal to disappear. But I hadn’t thought about what would take its place.
The world became overwhelming, and people stopped considering what others wanted. I began to wonder: did we need to be acceptable to be normal? We needed basic rules to protect ourselves. But do we really need rules about how I wear a shirt? My backwards shirt hurt nobody. Why could wearing it backwards make it completely different? Why do we need to judge people simply because they’re unusual?
Perhaps normal wasn’t the problem. Perhaps the problem was believing whatever was normal had to be right. Perhaps we had made the mistake that what most people did had to be what everyone did.
Maybe normal had always been there, waiting for someone to point it out. Waiting for humanity to turn it into a rule, a rule into something no one asked about.
Waiting for us to turn it into the default.
Editor’s Note: Vivi’s introspective piece begins with three lines that count down from three decades to three minutes. She traces one backwards shirt, with its buttons pressing against her spine, from a source of comfort to a problem, simply because it’s unusual. I especially admire that she does not let the world without ‘normal’ remain an utopia: she imagines the chaos which might follow, making her question about whether we need ‘normal’ much more complex to answer.
Why do humans wear clothes?
By Hannah Chang
What is something you do every day? Some may say brushing their teeth, others may say reading a book, but those are all things that you could easily forget to or not do. However, something you almost certainly do every day is wear clothes. Now, have you ever had to wear something you found uncomfortable, perhaps a shirt with the top button done, or a tie that you felt was choking you, and you wished you could be wearing something more snug, or more to your taste. But what if you, and everyone else in the world, did not wear clothes at all?
Fashion styles change constantly, and there are always new and upcoming designs being created, but what was the first ever piece of clothing like and who designed it? Well, actually, there is not one specific person that invented clothes. Instead, humans as a species decided to start covering their bodies for multiple reasons, including warmth and protection. The earliest evidence we have of humans possibly wearing clothes is from around 780,000 years ago, with stone tools found in the Spanish Atapuerca Mountains, which could have been used to create animal hides. As we move forward in the timeline to 400,000 years ago, we begin to see clearer evidence with the pattern of muscles on Neanderthal bodies, an extinct species of human, that suggested they regularly carried out tasks like hide preparation. Additionally, a study estimated that during the harsh winters, they would have needed to cover 80% of their body to survive.
Then, a study in 2011 in Florida made a breakthrough on this topic. The study showed that clothing lice began to evolve from head lice around 170,000 years ago, proposing a date for when humans started to wear clothes. David Reed, associate curator of mammals at the Florida Museum of Natural History said, "We wanted to find another method for pinpointing when humans might have first started wearing clothing. Because they are so well adapted to clothing, we know that body lice or clothing lice almost certainly didn't exist until clothing came about in humans."
David Reed said this because lice are a unique species of parasites, as they do not jump from animal to animal, but instead stay with the same species for millions of years, evolving along with the animal. This allows scientists to use lice as a marker of their host's evolution history.
Now, you might wonder: did people accept the idea of covering their body quickly, or did it take a while? Well, although it wasn't an overnight change, there was not a reason to turn down the idea. When clothing was first introduced, it was less about looks and fashion, and more focused on survival and protection. The first ever pieces of clothing were simple cloaks made of animals' pelts which protected them from the icy winds and storms and gave them warmth during the winter. In the warmer months, humans began to cover themselves with leaves for a shield from the severe sunlight and biting insects. As time went on, humans started to create more intricate clothes that fitted the body better, as it provided more insulation. This became especially essential around 40,000 years ago, when humans moved into Ice-Age Europe, where there were intense winters. Humans started using eyed bone needles to stitch animal hides together to create a tighter, more body-shaped winter gear. This helped them survive the winters, perhaps not with ease, but still successfully.
Wearing clothes has become almost like an unspoken rule in our society, and if you saw someone naked on the street, you would probably frown. So, what if, tomorrow, everyone just stopped wearing any form of covering? How would everyone feel? Well, although I cannot speak for everyone, most people would feel either self-conscious, embarrassed or weirded out. This is not because of anyone in particular, but simply because the idea of covering our bodies, at least in public, has been embedded in our brains, with us being covered just mere minutes after birth, and now, we would be going directly against it. I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that I hope that idea will never come to fruition. So, since the idea to stop wearing clothes is likely a bad idea, what would have happened if humans never started wearing clothes to begin with? Approximately 1 million years ago, humans had thick body hair that kept them warm. As they started to evolve, they lost their hair to sweat efficiently during long journeys. To stay warm, it is believed that humans smeared mud or clay on their skin. However, those solutions would not have been enough to survive the Ice-Age winters, limiting humans to warmer areas. That would lead to a significantly smaller population now, and perhaps, if the resources one day ran out in the warmer areas, the human population would go extinct.
In conclusion, I believe the invention of clothes was essential for the survival of humankind, and that the idea of covering our bodies in public should not be removed. As clothing continues to evolve, I am curious to see where it will go, and perhaps one day, hundreds of centuries later, the humans of that time will look back at the clothes we wear today and see how far clothing has gone.
Editor’s Note: Hannah opens with the tight top button and the choking tie, then traces clothing back hundreds of thousands of years by drawing on a wide range of research. One of her most memorable details is how the evolution of clothing lice lets scientists date when humans first wore clothes. Fittingly, the essay keeps to the conventions of formal writing, supporting her conclusion that some conventions are worth keeping.
Have you ever wondered why people tend to check the clock every now and again?
By Michelle Omeke
First Version
This convention is just something common that we tend to do to aid us in planning upcoming events beforehand, like being on time and organising our daily lives. Before clocks came to the world, the world must have been full of chaos. Would the world still be intact? If clocks or watches weren’t available, how would people be able to get around and still be on schedule?
Would we still have to rely on Egyptian sundials and water clocks; checking the movement of shadows and the flow of water at night to tell the hours? During the late 13th century, the first mechanical clock was invented in Europe with gears and weights by a group of scientists. Imagine if those scientists hadn’t done that. Till today, you would never have imagined that this small invention could make such a big difference and impact on the community.
If we didn’t have clocks, everyday would just be full of having to be in a fret. You’d have to refer to others' judgements and yours, as you wouldn’t know where to be at the right time. Nevertheless, you’d still have to be on time to your everyday activities and have enough time to do your necessities. Furthermore, there would be struggles of communicating with family and friends who are scattered across the world, including leaving your house, waking up and being aware of the time difference around the world.
Overall, this was an impeccable invention and would not have been possible without a group of scientists. Thanks to them, everyone can maintain being organised and set.
Revised Version
This convention is just something common that we tend to do to aid us in planning upcoming events beforehand, like being on time and organising our daily lives. Before clocks came to the world, the world must have been full of chaos. Would the world still be intact? If clocks or watches weren’t available, how would people be able to get around and still be on schedule?
Would we still have to rely on Egyptian sundials and water clocks; checking the movement of shadows and the flow of water at night to tell the hours? During the late 13th century, the first mechanical clock was invented in Europe with gears and weights by a group of scientists. Imagine if those scientists hadn’t done that. Till today, you would never have imagined that this small invention could make such a big difference and impact on the community.
If we didn’t have clocks, everyday would just be full of having to be in a fret. You’d have to refer to others' judgements and yours, as you wouldn’t know where to be at the right time. Nevertheless, you’d still have to be on time to your everyday activities and have enough time to do your necessities. Furthermore, there would be struggles of communicating with family and friends who are scattered across the world, including leaving your house, waking up and being aware of the time difference around the world.
For me, I experience time as being something that makes me feel down when I am in a rush and running late. On the other hand, time is also something that makes me feel free because when I don't have a lot of things on my mind, I can fill that time with whatever I want.
Overall, this was an impeccable invention and would not have been possible without a group of scientists. Thanks to them, everyone can maintain being organised and set.
Editor’s Note: Michelle’s engaging tone and rhetorical questions draw the reader in from the beginning. Her revised version develops something new: her personal experience of time. She imagines life without clocks as a constant ‘fret’, then admits that running late worries her, while having little on her mind gives her a sense of being more free. In a third version, she could explore the consequences of this new paragraph for her conclusion, which continues to thank the clock’s inventors. The clock, which keeps her organised, also appears to be what forces her into a state of discomfort when she’s late.