Trust me, I'm full of crap.

I was just reading over the post I started a few weeks ago but only posted a couple of nights ago. (it's My Best Friend, a few posts down.) I was thinking about how everything I wrote of that experience was real to me. And how disingenuous and patronizing it would have sounded from my friend's perspective. Who do I think I am? Talking about saving her as if she had needed saving from me. As if I hadn't been the one who needed saving, but it was at the same time those feelings were real to me, I wasn't making them up. And if I look from her perspective it hurts me - I was probably much more attached to her than she was to me, and she let me hang around, and feel cool, and use her as a convenient vehicle for my own self motivated self destruction. See, ouch, that's not as fun.

I've been thinking a lot about skewed perspective lately. I've had a few people share their own memories that have included me in forums like this and I have been surprised by the things that were mentioned and the things that were omitted. It's not fun, it kind of hurts, it's often the truth, but the least generous truth.

This sort of thing is happening everywhere it seems. I have been listening to the radio and noticing a disproportionate amount of kiss off songs - You'll Think of Me when you think of The Best Days of Your Life and I hope it Gives You Hell so take your cat and your freedom and move it to the left to the left, with everything you own in a box to the left. I can't help wondering, if given the opportunity, what the other party would have written about them. Maybe their song would have been entitled The Fact That you Wrote a Screw You Song Just Illustrates That the Problems We had Were Not All On Me. It's a little wordy, it probably wouldn't have as much of an audience, since we all love that righteous indignation, but I kind of like it.

I read the Glass Castle last year, and from my own experience with, let's say, a slightly unorthodox upbringing, I was curious about how much of that book would have been verified by other parties present. After Naomi Judd wrote her book, Love Can Build a Bridge, in which she exonerates a lot of her own questionable behavior as the choices of a woman who had no choices, her daughter Winona was quoted as saying " some day I think I'll write a book, I'll call it "The Truth".

Now, writing a screw you song is a little different, I think, than my post about my best friend who will always have a reserved parking space in my heart, but when recounting any personal experience the implied my intentions were always pure and I may not be perfect, because that would be annoying, but I'm pretty close is a special gift that we almost always save to bestow upon ourselves.

So in summary, my intentions were always pure, and I'm not perfect, but I'm pretty close.

It's Still Magic Time...

Small update. I take it back. I am still magical, but I've decided that it's best for me to maintain my amateur status. It turns out that I am not yet ready to go pro. I am not calling it quits, but I also don't want to pimp out special moments just so I can have something to report.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

But don't stop believin'.

It's Magic Time

I've always thought, like most people do, that I''m a little bit special. When I read Harry Potter I think, as most people do, if that kind of thing happened it would happen to me. I've always thought that maybe other kid's stuffed animals were made of fabric and stuffing (and in Chuckie's case an urge to kill) but mine couldn't help but be animated by the fairy dust that trailed off of me and all around my room. Don't get me wrong, they never spoke or moved, but I like to think that I had developed an understanding and respect for their need to keep up the charade as part of the rules by which all stuffed animals are governed, and I am pretty sure they had a quiet admiration for my insight.

I believe in pretty much everything, mermaids, fairies, the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, the Nigerian prince who needs our help. I think the world is as magical as you are willing to believe it to be. I think that we owe it to each other to make it more magical. I've always suspected trace amounts of magic on my person, but now I've decided to focus it.

So here's what I propose to myself - I'm am going to try to make a little magic a few times a week. Frivolous, silly, awe inspiring kind of stuff, the stuff that makes you think anything might be possible, and I'm going to practice on as many people as I can, but I'm going to practice primarily on the most receptive audience, my children. I'm thinking unbirthdays, midnight bike rides, hot air balloons, fancy dinners and secret admiration. The things that put a skip in your step and make you wonder what kind of happy surprise is lurking around the corner of life. I want to report back on my most fantastic successes and mortifying failures.

So this is my new idea, to spread magic, and what is magic if not the most frivolously necessary kind of love? The truth is I loved my stuffed animals so much that it was impossible to me that they could not love me back. I still see it that way, my eight year old heart was so full it had to have spilled over and made extra little hearts. Now I just want to fill up my heart until it has to spill over and fill those around me.

Wish me luck. I believe in wishes and luck.

Adult Braces

Adult Braces. If they had had them during the Spanish Inquisition we'd all be Catholic. I think it's more effective than water boarding - not only is it killing your mouth but you are also positive that at any second you are about to explode with shame. It's a double threat, making you wish you had never been born with an oral cavity while at the same time giving you that feeling that no one has been uglier in the history of the world and underneath the nearest bridge is your new ideal living situation. Nothing like having a salad for lunch and unwittingly wearing it until dinner or that feeling that your molars are about to shoot across the room immediately after turning the key to you're expander.

Hehe, Expander, it sounds both accurate and benign, like naming an electric chair Sparky.

I know at this point one would probably think, Oh, ha, yeah I remember that. Let me just tell you now that you don't. If you had braces when you were thirteen then you were distinctive, but part of the main stream of society. If you are an adult who is currently wearing braces you are the equivalent of those who lived in the underground, trying desperately to avoid the occupation of People with Parents Who Loved Them. And the PPWLT's tyranny knows no bounds. They politely try not to stare too hard as you try to pull your lips back over your teeth after smiling and they ask "So, they're comin' along, right?".

Ohhhh, I want to die.

Or they reminisce about their own experiences with braces, like it gives them cred. "I hated my braces, those bands are soo uncomfortable."

Yeah, you suffered in a cafeteria, I'm at a cocktail party. If you can't see the difference then I am not about to explain it to you.

But then, as you look away, you spy a metallic glimmer from across the room, you do a double take, there, a woman trying to smile with her mouth closed. Can it be? Yes she too has the tell tale guard-like bulge around her mouth, as though she came to a grown up function prepared to wrestle, or play football. She definitely has braces too. She turns to look at you and time stands still. You both begin to walk towards each other, pushing past waiters and other party goers until you meet in the center of the room, grasping each others arms.

How much longer do you have?

A year, you?

Six months.

Wax really helps.

Thanks. Hang in there OK. You're in the home stretch now.

You too, don't give up the fight, for straight teeth I mean.

It's not like I had never seen braces before, but even I was shocked when I got my first look in a mirror. Do they make braces in a Large, and if so why am I wearing the XXL? I'm driving home with my kids and as I look back I catch my reflection in the rear view mirror and start to cry. This is so embarrassing. I'm so ugly, and I'm a grown woman for crying out loud.

Just then I hear my four year old, Vivian.

Don't cry mommy, you're beautiful.

I look up through my tears and smile.

Vivian gives me an editorial once over.

Just don't smile.

-

I'm sitting in my orthodontist's chair while some cheerleader with a string of perfectly proportioned pearly teeth sticks various pointy objects in my mouth. I think that if they made dental equipment out of Pop Rocks instead of metal perhaps dentists wouldn't have that high suicide rate. It's a party in your mouth. But it's not like they do nothing to make the experience a little more fun. I did get to choose a graphic for my retainer. I chose a Grateful Dead skull. I'm not really a huge Dead fan but Rolling Stones graphics, while appropriate, were unavailable.

They also give you the super fun choice of bands to go around each individual brace. I'm stunned to find not one, but three shades of green. Seriously? You want this metal contraption that covers ninety percent of your mouth to have a green accent? Call me conservative, but this is not the arena in which I would like to let my freak flag fly. "You can have them alternate red, white and blue, for the Forth of July." offers cheerleader.

Wow.

I'm good, I actually already have a patriotic diaphragm and I don't want to look too busy.