Rules

　　We talked about rules; how you decided which ones to obey and which to break. It was like a class discussion in Citizenship ... only, it was nothing like a class discussion in Citizenship.

　　"Are you a rule breaker?" Uman asked.

　　"In my head I am, yeah."

　　"But not in practice."

　　"No. Not often, anyway. And nothing on your scale."

　　"Why is that, d'you think?"

　　"Don't know. Fear, probably. Fear of getting in trouble."

　　"And fear of standing out?" Uman suggested. "Fear of not fitting in?"

　　"Yeah, that too. As I've got older, I've become less daring. I guess."

　　He coughed. Just the once. "My father used to have a poster on the wall of his study —— a cartoon showing rows and rows of identical grey houses with identical grey roofs, with just one house in the middle with a roof painted in pink-and-purple stripes. Outside, the owner —— he's holding a paint pot and brush —— is being frogmarched down the street by the police." Another cough. It took Uman a moment to catch his breath. "As soon as I was old enough to understand that cartoon," he said. "I swore I would grow up to be a guy with a pink-and-purple roof."

Twenty Questions for Gloria, p70-71
Martin Bedford
ISBN 978-1-4063-6353-1