thistle

i once had the misfortune of being sent to mormon girl's summer camp when i was 14. they told us this little inspirational story and it goes like this:
two woodsmen were looking for trees to cut down and they came upon a grove of pine trees. set apart from the grove of pine trees was another pine tree. the trees in the grove all grew straight up and only had branches at the top. they were straight and tall and the woodsmen knew they would have no knots and would make excellent wood for building houses or making furniture. the other tree, apart from the grove, was twisted and gnarled and had lots of funny shaped branches growing out in all directions all over it. the woodsmen knew that that tree woul dhave lots of knots and wouldn't be good for making anything.
supposedly the moral of the story was, if you have a group of friends and stay around people a lot, you will grow up straight and strong and proper, without all sorts of deviations. but if you stay away from people, you will be twisted.
to me, the moral of the story is that if you have lots of people around, you will be just like everyone else and someone will cut you down and use you for their own purposes, while if you have no one else around you will look interesting and be safe from woodsmen. Hm.