HUMPS

It was maybe because she watched so much tennis that she was obsessed with grading things. She had a favourite player, a short angry guy who was prone to outbursts of both brilliance and ineptitude, and therefore prone to sudden jumps and lapses in world rankings. She gave everything a status relative to everything else. If you were unfortunate enough to ask her how she was going that day, rather than just saying good or fine, like every other human would when asked this question, she would have to place the day in a rank among all the others she had experienced. She kept journals, lists, meticulously evolving observations that placed everything she came across in immediate relation to other similar items and experiences. It really did get too much sometimes. One day, fed up, I asked her what her favourite thing in the world was. She looked at me blankly, pulled out her newest journal, and started writing.