The Perfect Hide-er

This week's Dr Who episode was about something I've thought about my whole life. Maybe they're just hallucinations, maybe I've been been dreaming, or maybe - just maybe - there is something else there. The main focus of the episode was that evolution has perfected survival skills; hunting, defense... hiding? Because - as the script quite rightly pointed out - if there was such creature to have perfected hiding, how would we know? A main theme within this theory was people talking to themselves, which I happen to do quite a bit.

I'm not one of the world's mumblers. I have hearing problems and constantly think everyone else is mumbling, so I sure as anything don't mumble. In fact, I was once reprimanded for having a good time by a total stranger in a coffee shop because 'there are other people in the room, you know, having their own conversations, not wanting to hear yours'. Firstly, I'll explain about this story that the woman was sat right next to me and there were plenty of empty tables. The only other people in the downstairs seating area we were in, were two men at different tables with their headphones so loud I could hear the words to their music and a woman looking totally disinterested in her surroundings, buried in a book. This woman, however, had chosen to take the time out of her conversation to specifically ask me to shut up. So I most certainly am not one of the world's mumblers. I do however mumble when I'm talking to myself. Apparently.
One time when I was in year 8, my neighbour's dad gave us a lift home from school. There were 5 children in the car plus a driver, so my neighbour sat in the very back seat in the middle of his car. About 30 seconds from our homes, I glanced into the rear-view mirror, completely out of chance to see my neighbour's eyelids raised higher than I thought possible, a probably imitation of the earliest recorded duck-faces and cheeks sucked in as if impersonating a fish. He basically looked like the kid on the tangfastic advert. The face then changed; lips remained in a forward pout but angled downwards, eyebrows furrowed into his nose and cheeks tightened, as if in a smile. I then asked what he was doing and, changing his face again, he told me matter-of-factly that he always does it: just like some people talk to themselves in the mirror, he makes faces at himself.
I'm not really suggesting that there's something there with you constantly watching you pull your faces in the reflection, or listening when you tell the empty house that you're going to make a cup of tea, but there must be a reason we do it.
I personally find it embarrassing that I can't stay in a room without keeping myself company; this weekend when I was at my friend's house, I got changed into my pajamas at night in the bathroom, sang a bit of Disney, then caught my eye in the mirror. That's when my 'thing' happened. See I don't talk to myself in the mirror. Call me crazy, call me lonely, regardless of what I am, I have conversations in my head, but I say my part out loud... except I don't: I mumble. I have hypothetical conversations with real people. I hear their response inside my head, and then mumble back to them in a very thorough response. Sometimes it's a continuation of an earlier argument from the day, sometimes it's them commenting on how I look and me bouncing a conversation off that, sometimes I'm just telling them what I think. But whatever we're talking about, I'm mumbling. Now I could tell you the logical explanation of mumbling in these conversations as being: they're in my head, the sound doesn't have to travel far so I don't need to say it loudly. The real reason though is that I'm scared someone else might hear and think I'm strange. But this week's video will pretty much confirm any speculation that I'm a bit different. I was surprisingly calm though when my friend - who at the time had been waiting outside the bathroom door, drink for me in hand - asked me in the morning if I talk to myself.
"What?"
"I heard you. Last night... the toilet, mumbling."
"Oh yeah I do that a lot."
"Hmm, me too. I thought it was just me!"
"So did I until now."
So me and Meghan were happy little bunnies, having discovered the other one talks to themselves in mirrors. Well look, there is another person in that mirror and I'm hearing half a conversation in my head. If I didn't respond I don't know what would happen, but it would probably involve more medication.
The thing about mirrors and me is that I really don't like them. That's not an insecurity of me not liking how I look - heck I'm a teenager, I know we all do that. No, my personal vendetta with mirrors is that they cannot be trusted. I'd let you break a thousand mirrors before you told me honestly that you trust them. Because, really, who trusts something without a colour?
Oh yes, that's right. What colour is a mirror? Silver? That's what I thought. Look again. That mirror you've been watching yourself in day after day? There is no colour to it. It imitates you, imitates anything put in front of it - it just copies. It takes on the colour of whatever is mumbling to it. Right now I can see a lamp, the top of a door frame and some whiskey tins. No mirror though, just a frame with a reflection. I just don't understand how anything without a colour can be trusted.
Maybe that's why I whisper. Maybe the creature that's perfected hiding is right in front of you, day-in-day-out. Maybe the creature who's perfected hiding in evolution is humans. Maybe we created something that can't be seen.

OoooooooOOOOOOOooooooooO creepy. Anyway, let me know in the comments below on the ever-so-fabulous google+ whether you mumble or shout at your reflection, let me know if you come up with the colour of a mirror and definitely let me know when you trust hidden-creature-creations again.