I was chatting with my friend Lady Ren the other day about why I’ll never be voted “Hottest Mommy Blogger” or given one of Cosmopolitan’s “Fearless, Funny, Female” awards.
I claimed the reason was because I don’t stick to any single blogging genre. I just flit about from topic to topic, writing about whatever I goddamn feel like, like some slightly-unhinged flitting thing. Or, to be more precise, like some slightly-unhinged flitting thing with internet access.
Lady Ren said it didn’t matter what I wrote about, because I always told my stories in the same way.
“Are you telling me I need to get some new jokes?” I asked her, somewhat horrified. New Jokes? Whose got time to come up with New Jokes?
But then I realised that she meant I had what is known in the trade as “a unique voice”. Kind of like Michael Cain, Sean Connery or David Beckham, but just in written form. Actually, come to think of it, David Beckham’s is more “surprising” than “unique”. You see him and he’s pretty pleasing on the eye and all, and then he opens his mouth and sounds like he’s just wet his pants and wants his mummy. So while loads of people go ’round trying to emulate Cain and Connery because it makes them sound cool, nobody goes round talking like David Beckham. Nobody. Even David Beckham tries not to talk like David Beckham because it somewhat undermines all that time he’s spent at the gym and those expensive clothes his mummy dressed him – I mean, his wife.
“Anyway,” Lady Ren said, breaking into my little revery. “I enjoy reading your blog because I know you and I can just see all the things happening to you.”
Which raised the fair point about what the hell those people who read my blog without knowing me must think of me. For one thing, what do they think I look like?
For the record: in my mind’s eye, I’m just a bit like Winona Ryder in “Reality Bites”. But to be quite honest, I probably look more like that actress in “Back to the Future” who plays Michael J Fox’s mum in the unaltered Future (and not the tennis-playing future), except with unbrushed hair and slightly-askew glasses with butter-smeared lenses. Anyway, I know there is a sizeable disparity between my mind’s eye and reality because I frequently catch a glimpse of myself pushing the Valco Mobile Home in the reflection of a shop window and think “Who the fuck is that?”. As far as I’m concerned, that’s not who I am. I’m something far more magnificent (and a tad less frumpy).
It reminded me of something Kurt Vonnegut once wrote which has always stayed with me. In the introduction to Welcome to the Monkey House, he said:
I have been a writer since 1949. I am self-taught. I have no theories about writing that might help others. When I write I simply become what I seemingly must become. I am six feet two and weigh nearly two hundred pounds and am badly coordinated, except when I swim. All that borrowed meat does the writing.
In the water I am beautiful.
Vonnegut also drew a picture of his arsehole, which has also always stayed with me, but for very different reasons. Obviously.
I guess what I’m trying to say is this:
In my mind, I’m young, thin and pixie-esque. In my mind, I’m absolutely knee-slapping hilarious and worthy of winning a whole gaggle of awards. In my mind, I never deserve a Late Pass and people get served legal writs with their Happy Meals. In my mind, it’s totally okay to get a stuffed bear drunk at the Gin Palace, to seek legal advice from Grizzly Adams or even to stage a musical theatre-style rumble between warring Kindergarten Mother factions in the Presbyterian Church car park. In my mind, it’s always Happy Hour and the cocktail of the day is The Flirtini.
As far as I’m concerned, my mind is a pretty fun place for me to hang out.
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