Fiona enters the booth and gives the camera a smile.
Hi again. Been a while since I've been in here. I had been meaning to get in more, to tell you all more stories about the daily adventure that is me, but...
She shrugs.
Life, you know? But hey! Nothing like company mandated confessional time to get me back in here, right?
She looks for a moment as if she's not at all sure that this is something actually celebrate, before looking down at a card in her hand. Her lips move as she mutters to herself the instructions written on it.
Right. Best moments of my life, and which one I'd like to relive if I only had half a minute to live. Well that's sort of difficult, isn't it?
Fortunately for you all, I've come prepared!
She beams at the camera and turns the card over to a list of small-print items. She squints at the writing for a moment before smiling sheepishly.
Sometimes I can't read my own writing.
She sits upright and clears her throat.
Okay, right. "Leaving for school." Now, I'm sure a lot of folks out there are going to say variations on the same. And everybody has different reasons, too. Mine was independence. I finally got to get away from home and face things by myself. Okay, I was homesick as hell for the first couple weeks, but in that first moment of leaving the train station and waving goodbye to my parents and my five younger siblings, who were no longer my responsibility at all, it was pretty great. It was about freedom and finally beginning to understand personal responsibility. And about not getting yelled at anymore for bugging my sister. That was a big plus.
She glances at the card again.
Okay, not related to school, the moment I realized I loved my job. It was very brief, and not some great lightbulb revelation, but just a moment when I was still a trainee, and I was in a library, up to my ears in legal terminology and with a pounding headache, but I was reading a case transcript, and the girl in it reminded me a lot of one of my younger sisters, and it became real to me how much of a difference people in my field could make in someone's life. I'll admit I went into the training program to get my mother off my back and to prove that I would fail spectacularly, and yet here I am.
Fiona shrugs again and looks back at the card.
Last one, sneaking out and seeing my favorite band in Cardiff. I know, every teenager has done this, or at least all the fun ones, and it's really a rite of passage. But does every teenager who's done this get to meet the band after? Not like a fantasy come true where you're spontaneously whisked away backstage because you have on a cool shirt or something, but they were doing signings in the back alley after and I got to chat a bit and get some pictures taken that helped me through the month of grounding that followed.
So. Which would I relive? The last one. Definitely. It's all wonderful to have epiphanies about yourself and change your view of life and become a new person, but if it was the last thirty seconds of my life, why wouldn't I want to spend those moments hanging out with rock stars?