The Other Sophia By GG_LeBode , Brooklyn, NY More by this author Email me when GG_LeBode contributes work Image Credit: Hadley B., Marblehead, MA Dear Sophia, It takes an uncomfortable amount of introspection to admit that I am “the other Sophia.” I’m the one who has to sacrifice my last vowel so that we can be identified separately. I am the one who should give up a letter of her identity. Every time someone shouts our name in a crowd and I crane my neck like Tantalus to his fruit tree, my heart stiffens when I realize they are speaking to you. Whenever they announce an award and speak my three syllables, I hold my breath for the last name. Then I have to hold my tongue while you bow so low your medals scrape the floor. The stab of “almost” and “so close” is always the slightest bit sharper when I lose to myself. Gold medals shine brighter next to silver when they are engraved with the same string of letters. It’s not your fault, of course. The only first place we’ll ever share is Most Common Name in the United States for Four Years in a Row. There are more than 50,000 of us in our country alone. But you probably already knew that. Every morning I watch you disappear with friends and I think, You know exactly where you belong. Every question I answer incorrectly is a reminder that I am the other Sophia. Every stolen glance at you is a bitter wish to be as good as – no, superior to – you. I don’t know if you catch me jabbing you with covetous glares, but even if you did, you would graciously forgive me, like the saint I’ll never be. I’ve always seen you as competition. You were the Sophia I wished I was. You were always one inch taller, one friend more likable, and one grade point smarter. I was Ron Weasley to your Harry Potter. I turned you into an ideal that I aspired to and impersonated. You aren’t the only Sophia I’d rather be. There is the one in math class who finishes her tests before I can scrawl out our name. There is a clone in dance who can fouetté while I wobble in a passé. There is the one laughing with her friends while I watch, only pretending to read. There are far too many people who give me unattainable standards. While other girls wish they were Jennifer Lawrence, I still can’t get over those god-damned Sophias. “Sophie,” I shout at myself, “would you please clean your dorky glasses and look at things objectively? You need to get over yourself. Do you really think no one understands how you feel? You have become a cliché of a teenager. Maybe I should get you a 1D album and a Twilight book. We can meet up at the Starbucks.” I cannot succumb to the stereotypes of a generation. I must stop lathering myself in self-pity and clean my glasses every once in a while. It’s amazing what clear vision can do for a person. Suddenly I see the pimples hiding in the forest of your hairline. I see the crescents of stress and sleep deprivation beneath your eyes. I see the tears and the strength and all the bullet holes from everyone else who put a target on your back. I see a girl who wishes her name wasn’t so freaking common and that she could hide from all the pressure. I blink, to make sure I wasn’t imagining some wraith in this goddess’s place, and I see a girl just like me. Sophia, you are gifted and virtuous and the reincarnation of Galatea, but you are not the goddess I made you out to be. I turned you into an idol and a martyr and a model in a magazine, but you are as human as I am. For every insecurity I flicked onto you, I hope they didn’t stick. I am not the other Sophia. I am no one’s lesser version. – Sophie Texas Tough By prokofiev, Bothell, WA More by this author Email me when prokofiev contributes work Image Credit: Dan Z., Marblehead, MA The author's comments: Looking for photos of us, the ones I could find made me laugh; of the few photos I located, one captured him wearing a hat emblazoned with the words "NRA Freedom", and in another construction tools are visible in the corner. Lacking access to more than a few photos, I have relied on verbal accounts to learn about him; after learning so much about him now, after his death, I wish so much that I could talk to him now, with my greater understanding of him and awareness of the world around me. He was flawed, and while I recognize his shortcomings, I also celebrate his qualities I admire. Within this piece I worked to balance both aspects of him, the negative and the positive. For both the people you love or agree with and the people you hate or disagree with, have an open mind, and acknowledge both the good and then bad things about them. People are complex, confusing beings; do not try to simplify them in order to understand them. “Junk fish!” I look on in horror as the small fish attached to my pole is thrown on the ground and squished by my grandfather’s foot. Just six years old, I am on my first fishing trip, and my first catch is oozing, crushed on the ground. The fish (or thanks to my grandpa “seafood pancake”) is thrown back into the rushing river, no longer wriggling. At the time, I could not fathom why my grandfather was so cruel to the small specimen dangling on my line; however, now I know that his actions, though blunt, had a clear cause. I was close to tears at his brutal killing of the writhing fish, and my grandmother was appalled at his action and told him so. Yet the specific species of fish I had caught was invasive and parasitic, feeding on many of the native species to the point where some species were nearing extinction, so to my grandfather it was only right to prevent it from further defiling the river. Growing up in Texas, my grandfather felt that hunting and fishing were merely natural activities. To him, there were was no point of those “hippie ideas” about saving the animals and abstaining from meat. Vegetarianism was a ridiculous concept really, for why would God have given us meat if we were not meant to eat it? Nonetheless, his mentality did not mean he did not care about the ecosystems he entered, in fact, he valued the forest and its creatures more than many of the environmentalists I see today. Respectful of the habitat he entered and the animals with in it and careful to only take what he would use, my grandfather instilled a sense of reverence towards nature and the organisms that lived in the environment within me. Now, let us fast forward three years. I sit on the floor of my grandparent’s spacious house, shouting triumphantly after winning a rousing game of cards with my brother, as an old dog limps pathetically down the stairs towards us. A pup of his father’s farm dog, Rufus was a wedding present from my grandfather’s first wedding. After his first wife died, my grandfather moved, taking the dog with him; now that he is married again, the old dog is all he has left of his first marriage. The wooden stairs prove to be too slick for the sagging creature’s weathered paws and arthritic knees, and the dog slips and falls the last five steps. Suddenly, my grandfather stands up from his large leather chair and declares, “I have to go do something.” His heavy boots stomp on the ground; his hand reaches towards the dog’s throat, grabbing the unfortunate animal’s collar and dragging his weary body to the door. As he walks outside, grabbing the hunting gun from the closet, my grandmother begins to cry and my mother looks distraught, staring at his broad back in confusion. I hold my breath, eyes glued on the closing door, waiting for-for what? I am smothered by silence. A gunshot cuts the static of anticipation. My mother gasps, the door slams. My grandfather walks silently back inside, his back hunched forward as he returns the gun to the closet. He sits back on the leather chair without a single word or glance to the rest of us in the room. The dog does not return. Later, armed with only a shovel and old memories, my grandfather digs a grave as the heavy rain ceaselessly soaks the earth. He covers his venerable companion’s body with dirt, next to an apple tree the dog had spent many hours lounging under when the summer sun was still shining and the heat wrapped its stifling arms around you. Born in Texas during the Great Depression, a veteran of a world war, thrice married and twice widowed, my grandfather was neither tactful nor sophisticated. His fingernails were perpetually caked with dirt, and I never saw him wearing any shoes but his crusty brown work boots. He was bow-legged, broad shouldered, and had a wide face and thick square glasses. A carpenter after his stint in the army as a undistinguished infantryman, he was missing three of his fingers from a lapse in judgement.