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She went to a small, private high school that was fairly resource limited. The education level on content and requirements were vastly superior in many ways then what public education had to offer. However her schools administration had to make do with what they had available, always.
One fateful morning it arrived unceremoniously under the wheel of some unfortunate parent's wheel. All the students commented and laughed, as it was drug out from beneath one of their wheels, being rescued not for it's possible future usefulness. Instead for the inconvenience of the noise it no doubt was creating for the hapless driver that had absconded with it from some construction site along their commute to the school. Little did the driver know just how important a contribution to the school their unwitting thievery would become to the school.
When the blacktop of the parking lot was redone it was a valuable addition to the small arson of cones already in possession as school property. At football games it stood proud and tall towering over all the other cones as a gauge of it's strength and prowess in determining yardage gained and so on. It no longer was simply another roadside warning against a bad idea of possible road usage. No the lone tall, rubber stained slightly damaged orange cone had eventually become a sort of symbol of her schools' very existence despite adversity and lack of funding.
After a time it no longer mattered where it came from. It just mattered that it was representative of the great number of misfits that filled the seats of the school. Just as what filled the walls within, so some of its boundaries or orange warning cones needed to be, a bit irregular. The lone over sized cone that obviously wasn't bought or acquired in any conventional means was as much a mascot for the school as anything could have ever been. It didn't matter what your past was or who you had been before becoming a member of that school, what mattered was who you were as a member or because of your time spent there.
Like the cone, she too had definite markings on her life that can never be erased. They can only be worn as proof that she too survived and continue on despite misuse and being trampled, driven over a few times. That single resilient orange traffic cone turned into an icon of perseverance that acts as a beacon to her throughout her life. She carries the lesson of the orange traffic cone over and over in all her new adventures. To stand tall and proud, despite the marks and scars of the past, to fit in and contribute to best of your ability even when you are obviously a misfit.
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