The Art Of The Unique : Decorator

Tonight the balcony was colder, winter a little older but the trees on the street still had christmas lights glowing red, blue, green and yellow. I mulled over my favoite tree. Last time I'd made it Unique with a trick of context. Was there another technique?

Luckily I had a string of monocolor lights and a stepladder in my car. After twenty minutes of work, my favorite tree glowed only with cobalt blue lights. I stepped back and applied the test of Uniqueness:

Was this tree different? Oh, yes.
Was it unusual? Sure.
Was it unrepeated? Definitely.
Was it rare?

Was it? I wasn't sure. Within a few city blocks and for the winter, perhaps it was. Now my notion of "context" included timeframe as well as location. I'd transformed the tree to Unique without altering context, but by altering its external facade. Then I realized that this was an instance of the Decorator design pattern.

It still felt wrong.
The change was too transient, too temporary.
Too modern.

Uniqueness from organic properties should be different than Uniqueness from a facade. Don't you think? In any event, the facade forced my realization that Uniqueness is also time-based. An object may not have it, then it might, then it may not again. Think of a baseball player, an actor, or a politician. They are unknown, then famous, then forgotten.

The Decorator pattern is often used to create the illusion of Uniqueness in today's world. A Honda Accord with a special paint job. A ghost writer. A tattoo.