I Don't Care

That was my go-to phrase when I was a kid.

Parent: "Mindy, you didn't clean your room."
Me: "I don't care."

Parent: "You're grounded you for a week."
Me: "I don't care."

Parent: "You're making me angry!"
Me: "I don't care."

As you can see, I learned early on that apathy is the biggest stick you can carry while walking softly. So my parents found the perfect book for me: PIERRE by Maurice Sendak.

PIERRE is the story of a young boy who uses that same catchphrase to dismiss, irritate and otherwise flaunt his independence to his parents. Tried beyond endurance, Pierre's parents go to the movies one night to get away and a lion marches into the living room and announces he's going to eat Pierre, who boldly claims -

"I don't care."

And is thus eaten.

After this little literary gem had been installed on my bookshelf, my parent's automatic response to my defiant "I don't care" was -

"Okay, Pierre."

Which was a really nice way to say, "Get your shit together or you'll be eaten by a lion."

I hear "I don't care," everyday in my job, and it never slips by without my brain tacking on, "Okay, Pierre." So Maurice Sendak is going to be with me for a long time, haunting my steps and reminding me to care.

Or be eaten.

Thursday Thoughts

Thoughts lately…

1) Facebook really enjoys being the last word in social networking. When you accept a friend request from Bob it says,  "You are now friends with Bob." Yeah, 'cause before you were totally faking it.

2) I think nerd is just another word for someone who's discovered that 90% of society is bullshit and removes themselves from it.

3) When someone says, "Race ya!" and you immediately say, "You win," without breaking stride, it totally takes the wind out of their sails.

The Stories We Tell

All of our lives can be retold as stories, some of us are just able to do it better than others.

People tell me all the time that my life sounds so fun, so odd, so... interesting. It's not. I've got a 40/wk that I actually love, but I'm also on the treadmill five days out of the weekly seven for half an hour, struggling to not eat drive-thru food more than I have to, and leaning a little closer to the mirror everyday to see how many more grays have spawned during the night. I also consistently forget to change my oil and lock my keys in my car ridiculously often.

I'm not any different from you, or any other average human being. The trick is to make myself *sound* interesting, which I've come to realize, is an inherited ability.

I spent five days in New Mexico with my crit partner, RC Lewis. It was awesome, except for the extra day spent in the airport. When I finally got home 36 hours later than scheduled my mom said, "Let me get my coffee, then we'll sit down and you can tell me all about it."

Then my sister called me to "hear all about it."

I suddenly realized that maybe not all families function in this way. Perhaps storytelling is something I was raised on, intrinsically absorbing the threads of my genetic plot as we invited anyone who had been on a trip, had an extraordinary experience, or we just hadn't seen in awhile, to "tell us about it."

From my German great-grandfather's accent laden stories of coming over on a ship alone when he was just fifteen, to my Irish grandmother's tales of growing up in an orphanage along with her five siblings, to my obscenity-laced overblown narrative of eight hours sitting on my ass in Albuquerque, our stories are part of a larger web that we've learned to spin from those who came before us.

So tell your stories tell your kids, and maybe when they're older they'll still want to sit down with you and share theirs.