tribes

You know how as soon as you get something new... whether it's a new car or a Crumpler bag or an iPhone or a friend announces they're pregnant... and then suddenly you're seeing the same make or model of car... or people with iPhones and Crumpler bags... or you seem to be tripping over pregnant women (not literally of course)...

In my case of course, I'm suddenly noticing all the people with those little white Apple earphones in a way I hadn't before. In fact, when I went for my walk on Monday the first two people (in the space of about a minute and a half in fact) I saw wearing earphones had those little white Apple ones.

Now normally I would have just chalked it up to coincidence or the law of possession (when you have something, you notice it) or some such...

But this time it got me thinking about tribes.

We all belong to tribes. The tribe of our family, the tribe of our friends, the tribe of our workplaces... but then there are the wider tribes... the iPhone tribe, the Crumpler tribe, the left handed tribe (which Ma is a member of). And then there's the tribe of sexuality... which has any number of it's own little sub-tribes...

I may have nothing in common with the skinny little androgynous tattooed freak (in an Empire Records way) who works in JB HiFi... but seeing him walking down the street on the weekend holding hands with his boyfriend makes us part of the same tribe.

And had the straight boy walking the other way... who not only had to have a good look at the pair of them repeatedly, but also did it with a slight look of either disgust or puzzlement (or both) on his face... either verbally or otherwise "attacked" them, I like to think that I would have reacted to defend part of my tribe.

Which, of course, is different from being part of the iPhone tribe...

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