Someone to Watch Over Me

I barely make it day to day.

I look like a real girl, but if you look around the facade you'll see my husband, children, friends, church members, and family are holding up the cardboard cutout that is me. I'm forgetful, I don't remember how to jump a car, I have to be reminded by bank tellers how to deposit checks, I used a car wash for the first time by myself the other day, a very nice Russian fellow with hair peaking out of his wife-beater had to explain it to me. It turns out that it's kind of fun...soapy.

Any friend of mine should be sainted, because I am a crappy friend. I'll love you, I'll think good thoughts about you and not judge you, I'll hug you or want to hug you a lot, and I'm pretty fun. If you like not having to be a fool because someone else has already filled that position, I'm your gal. I'm also usually up for anything. I'm a pretty good time, but I will almost positively not remember your birthday, or bake you cookies. If you need help call me, and I'll show up, but if you need to schedule me a month in advance, you better remind me the day before or I won't be there. I don't bring handi wipes anywhere. I pack fried chicken and no napkins, jello with no spoons, and, if you're down, we can slurp jello out of our fingers and wipe chicken grease in the grass and laugh at our green greasy faces.

I ran a relay with a bunch of gals earlier this summer, I forgot my shoes. A couple of girls drove me to the mall.

The thing is I often don't need saving, it's just that I just don't mind being saved. If I have to, I'll run barefoot like the Ethiopians. Who needs shoes when you have spontaneity!

It's also sometimes embarrassing, I'm a child. In fact my children are often more productive and thoughtful than I am. They remind me that I forgot my keys, or their homework, and then shake their heads and say Mom is crazy. Somehow it doesn't sound like an insult the way they say it, and I can't believe the generosity of the world for little people who can say I'm crazy as if it's a virtue. That there are so many people in the world who make me feel proud of myself for who and what I am.

I gotta go, it's rain storming and Maggie and I need to go for a run and a stomp.

But thanks for providing shoes, good friends of the world.