Identity

What earliest messages are learned, and incorporated into our sense of things? How the world works, how people react. Even how reality defines identity within moving boundaries of understanding, all we know, based only on intrinsically unique experience.

Cheri learned that some people won't believe what she believes. Even when you look deeply into your own parents eyes, so they can really see you. Even when you know they cannot.

Cheri tried several times, but her folks just shook their heads and laughed. Or sighed and smiled, saying "What will we do with our imaginative little girl?"

But that was it, Cheri wasn't being silly, and despite what she may look like on the outside, the five-year old was sure about what she felt: that she wasn't just a little girl as much as she was really a turtle, like her old pal, Morton.