In the tarot deck, the Fool’s number is either 0 or 21. The other twenty cards of the Major Arcana come in a prescribed order, progressing from the Magician to the World. The individual cards tell a sort of story, the story about the Fool. Because he is the protagonist and not an incidental character, he either comes at the beginning or end of the great story.

I discovered the Tarot the winter of my freshman year at Callie’s house. I ended up buying myself Osho Zen deck because I loved the pictures. Later I got this card in the Hanson-Roberts deck. The Fool card, as with everything in the Tarot, is full of symbolism. The white rose stands for purity. His red and blue clothes symbolize both mental and physical affiliations. The boy is stepping out over a cliff, about to pitch into the valley below, yet he seems just as happy as if he had good sense.

All teenagers are the Fool. We are all Jack of the Appalachian stories, the ridiculed youngest son who ends up slaying the giant and marrying the prettiest girl in the county. We are all the third prince of the fairy tales who outsmarts his older brothers to win the kingdom. We are the Luke Skywalkers, the Bilbo Bagginses. We all want to prove to the world that we really are heroes, that we can deal with the world’s impossible tasks in spite of everything against us.

I see a lot of parallels between this happy-go-lucky wanderer and myself. We both have one foot planted on the ground behind us, one stepping out into the void that is the future. We have no solid identities, but are made of all the ideas and colors we have gathered so far. We both carry the white rose of hope. We are suspended between the danger of the pit below us and the promise of the dawn before us.