Born This Way

“I’d love to know more about you.” Alice turned to the Mad Bunny, “Were you born this way?”

A puzzled look crossed the Mad Bunny’s face.

Alice felt she needed to elaborate, “Were you born as The Mad Bunny? Or was there a point in time when you, a bunny, turned into you, The Mad Bunny?”

“Ah… You are wondering about my uniqueness… I’ve often wondered about it myself. My parents were simple, common bunnies. I was born a bunny and at the time nobody had any reason to suspect I’d ever be anything else. On the outside, I was as plain a bunny as a bunny can be. On the inside, I was me.”

Hesitating for a moment the Mad Bunny leaned closer towards Alice, lowering his voice an octave, “I could never tell how different on the inside I was from the other bunnies because I could never see inside other bunnies. I dare say, I always felt I was special; but then again, I suspect all bunnies feel they are special, and there isn’t anything special about that.”

Alice nodded.

“It wasn’t until that one particular event that took place in my early formative years, that everything changed. It was a gloomy day. A Sunday. I know because every Sunday after mass my parents would go for their habitual afternoon walk on the beach. This very Sunday they stumbled upon a large, bowler hat. It was just standing there, in the middle of the sandy path. It was so big they had to walk around it. It was so elegant and posh they had to stop to admire it.”

The Mad Bunny suddenly felt inspired, the words were flowing almost in rhyme.

“This particular hat was so mysteriously inviting,
so curiously out of place.
My parents looked around and called out
for the owner, just in case.

But no one came.

So they took a moment,
consulted each other, and
concluded there could be no downside
if they just sneaked a peak inside.

As my father lifted the tip of the hat,
he heard my mother grasp for breath.
She covered her mouth with her hand as she screamed,
“Husband, this isn’t funny!”
My dad looked inside the hat
and for the first time saw me,
the Mad Bunny.

After this incident with the hat,
things were never the same for me
in the land of the bunnies.
But fortunately,
the hat had stuck,
and I could jump in it
(that’s just my luck!)
and dive in through to the other side
where my true nature doesn’t hide.

On the other side,
all kinds of weirdos and freaks reside.
Even you, Alice.
Come to think of it, we have met
on the other side of the hat.”

“Indeed we have”, Alice nodded.

Photograph from the series Mad Bunny by Yves Lecoq

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