WHY LIFE'S A BEACH: The Family (Vacation) Revisited

Raise your hand if you are lucky enough to belong to a family!  Ha.  That was a trick, because I can’t see you and also because I know that most of us a) belong to some kind of family and b) aren’t always convinced that luck had anything to do with it.  Ha again!  I am one of four kids, the quintessential “middle child”; my older sister is the oldest, my older brother is the only boy and my younger sister is the baby.  Making me Jan Brady and then some.  My siblings are also the ruddy cheeked, robustly built, fun-loving athletic types, while I am the gangly, bookish, artsy geek.  You see where this is going.  Every family needs an ugly duckling to keep things in perspective and I was born to the job, as it were.   If I had a childhood theme song, it would have been “One of these things is not like the others (one of these things just doesn’t belong)” from Sesame Street.  And believe me, I know there are millions of people out there who could say the same thing.  I know my experience as an outsider in my own clan is hardly unique.

So now we are all grown up, and while some things never change (in both good and bad ways), I have to say that as each of us has become more of “ourselves” with age, this has actually caused us to grow closer.  There are blessed few indisputable facts in this lifetime (outside of death and taxes), but your family, for better or for worse is one of them.  And as you mature, the differences in interests, political views and priorities melt into the background as your shared sense of humor, experiences and common enemies (usually within the extended family, but sometimes it might just be Scottie Pippen) become predominant.  There is no friend like an old friend the saying goes, but even an old friend can’t hold a candle to the people who have born witness to the entirety of your life.

Which leads me to the topic…the family vacation.  Is there any experience more dreaded/highly anticipated/lovingly remembered than this?  Dreaded for too many reasons to count:  logistics (can we coordinate schedules, nap times, napkins?), location (location, location), length (how long will it be before the laughs stop and the glares begin?) and lottery (What will the weather be?  Will anyone get sick?  Will any flights get cancelled?  Etc., etc.!)  Highly anticipated because of aforementioned laughs, food, fun and, if you are lucky, multiple generations frolicking in one general area.  Lovingly remembered because let’s face it, today’s bad experience is by and large tomorrow’s funny story, so we all enjoy reminiscing about our trip to the Cape and the potato chip that somehow became affixed to my older sister’s face due to my brother’s stellar efforts with dip-n-jab.  Good times!!!!!  In retrospect, nearly always.

For the past several years, the location (location, location) of our family trip has become static due to the unbelievable hospitality and generosity of my sister-in-law’s mother and step-father; we all travel to Wilmington, North Carolina and spend a few to several days enjoying the surf and sand at beautiful Wrightsville Beach.  To say this experience is highly anticipated would be an understatement; I would assert it is without a doubt the highlight of my son’s year and most certainly has created the kind of golden childhood memories that only the best of writers can ever hope to recreate with words.  There is not a single aspect of this trip that, to a child most definitely, is not 100% satisfying.  I could describe for you the two beautiful homes we spend time in, the flawless beach, the fabulous meals, the ping pong, the custard stand, the fish market, the water balloon fights and even the awesomely creepy “serpantarium” we are driven to on rainy days, but you still would not know how it feels to be there.  With your children.  And your witnesses.  It borders on, and often crosses into, the sublime.

But guess what?  For the adults, there is a lot of work.  Meals to plan and prepare, bags to pack and unpack, children to bathe and feed and tend to in a myriad of ways.  And if you are a family, there may be a Frederick in your midst (who is “gathering colors” as the rest of you hump it), or there may be an expected guest or two, or an unexpected obligation or three, and your greatest woe will never be that the custard stand didn’t have the flavor you were dreaming of today.  Vacations are a ton of work if you have kids, and unless you are at an all-inclusive resort, some work anyhow even if you don’t.  And so nerves fray (nothing like laundering vomit out of bedding at 1 AM for this), and tempers flare (she asked nicely, but my sister-in-law had to reprimand ALL of the siblings for our love of profanity in close quarters), and feelings are hurt because we are all so human and so very enmeshed that if there is anyone in the world who knows just the exact thing to say that will set you off, or send you into a tailspin of insecurity, it is someone in your family.  Danger UXB, as they said in post-war years.  There are so very many unexploded bombs waiting to be set off.

But the family vacation, while fraught with mines, is also ripe with opportunities.  My parents were fond of telling us when we were children, “There is a whole world out there waiting to be unkind to you, so don’t be unkind to each other.”  Of course we waited until they left the room, gave them the finger, and then went back to torturing each other.  But now we are grown up, and while I will not claim we have achieved some sort of utopian nirvana, I will say that the kindness is at an all-time high.  The enjoyment of the “luck” involved in belonging to a family as well.  I am lucky enough to belong to a family.  For better or for worse, for richer and for poorer, we are a team and on our best days, a winning one.  On our worst days, we can still remember the glories of years gone by and bask in the knowledge that we have time ahead of us to build more of those precious memories.  Some of which start with a potato chip affixed to a face with dip. Ha.

WHY I WENT TO MY REUNION: Nevermind the Aftershame, Here's the Librarians!

So I just got back from my 25^th college reunion.  YAY!!!!  We’re OLD!!!!  But seriously, folks, I had nothing but pleasant, stimulating and/or invigorating interactions the entire weekend.  NOTHING BUT, can you imagine?  For an entire weekend???  You are right, I was pretty sure I had actually died on my way there (I did drive through a monsoon-like storm) and was currently in heaven, because how is that a sustainable reality?  An entire weekend of nothing but positive, happy, supportive vibes?  Whew.  Looking back, it HAS taken on a dream-like quality…the familiar faces, the supportive rapport, the humor, the intelligence, the downright determination to have a FUCKING GOOD TIME.  ALL of these things came into play, and I was not sorry to see a single face, hug a single person and had a 100% lack of something I have termed “aftershame”.  You know, that sick pit in your stomach you get after a night out when you feel you may have tried too hard?  Or too little. Or drank too much. Or too little.  It is so hard to get it exactly right, right?  But I did.  Just this once.

Now surely you could find someone to disagree.  Someone who could say that I did drink too much, or mention the fact that I had mascara smeared under my eyes from laughing so hard I had to cover my face, or that I had to leave the bbq because I am neurotic about food, or wouldn’t dance at the campus pub because it was too damned hot, or wouldn’t march in the all-class parade because I DO NOT MARCH.  You could find those people.  But they are not MY PEOPLE.  My people would say the same thing as I:  a good (wonderful, fabulous) time was had by one and all.  We were happy to be together and it all felt so RIGHT, so IN SYNC (N’Sync?) that we can’t wait for 5 years to go by to do it again.  HA!  Of course we don’t really need to wait 5 years, but life is busy and time passes so quickly, and schedules are hard to coordinate and also, we are most likely saving it for the librarians.

Obviously, it will be difficult for me to justify this last excuse.  Save it for whom? What?  But actually, as a moment of perfection in an absolutely sublime weekend, “save it for the librarians” was my takeaway.  The quote that resonated most deeply with me.  Because a hilarious, gorgeous, vivacious woman shared with me the fact that her husband doesn’t, in fact, find her to be all that funny.  And when she whips out her rapier wit on his behalf, he tells her to “save it for the librarians”.  Yes, she is getting her PhD in library science.  So she’s smart, too.  “Save it for the librarians,” he says.  Ironically, this is a pretty good line.  But it is also reflective of a trend I noticed throughout the weekend.  We were quite terribly overjoyed to be with each other because we GET each other.  Even after 25 years.  And some of us (a lot of us?) are living with, married to or in love with people who not get us in that same way, even after much more extensive contact.  Proving to me at least, that you can’t fake or force that “CLICK”.

So what gives?  I am the first to admit, my husband doesn’t find me all that funny, although anyone who reads my blog knows I AM EMPIRICALLY A LAUGH RIOT.  Ha.  Another friend of mine, who can literally make me laugh without ever changing his expression, who simply by hesitating a moment can prompt me to guffaw, claims his S.O. “doesn’t laugh”.  Not only at him, but at funny movies, professional comedians, etc.  She just doesn’t like to laugh at all, he says.  So how does THAT work???  A high school friend of mine who recently started a successful women’s social club, shared an interesting encounter on HER blog:  she reconnected with an old acquaintance recently who rejected membership in said club with this excuse:  “I don’t like to have fun”.  YOU DON’T LIKE TO HAVE FUN????  WTF???  And what do you want to bet she is married to a PARTY ANIMAL?

So here is my theory:  the hilarious, gorgeous, vivacious woman whose husband told her to “save it for the librarians”?  She married someone who lets her rest.  Who gives her a break.  Who doesn’t need her to be hilarious, gorgeous and vivacious 24/7.  My friend with the S.O. who doesn’t laugh?  Needs a moment when he doesn’t feel obligated to make anyone laugh.  And perhaps the fact that my own husband doesn’t crack a smile while reading my blog is a relief to me as well.  It is hard to live with a bright light shining in your eyes all the time, and our partners do admirably well, when you consider their circumstances in that manner.  Hilarious, gorgeous and vivacious might actually be a little tough to take around the clock.  Hence, the request to “save it for the librarians”.  The ironically funny request.  But it also makes me wonder…while it is perfectly healthy to give it a rest at home, how many of us are forgetting to take it back out and let it shine in the rest of our lives?

When you are young and searching for your place, you pull out all of the stops.  No stone is left unturned in the hunt for the “CLICK”, that sense of belonging, that sense of self.  You put yourself out there again and again because it is the only way to experience who you are in the world.  But as we get older and life settles in, we become more self-protective.  Life (and aftershame) teach us to withhold more, hide our light when it makes others uncomfortable and believe the feedback of strangers more than our own hearts.  We start saving it for the librarians, because…well, pearls before swine and all that.  But here is the dilemma:  how will you know if the CLICK is there if you don’t pull out all of the stops?  There is no quicker litmus test as to whether or not you are in the best situation for you if you act completely and totally like yourself and get nothing but a slack-jawed stare.  I’m glad I went to my reunion because it reminded me that my people and my place exist.  But it also reminded me that the only way to find them is to stop hiding…and stop saving it for the librarians.

WHY THE MIRROR DOESN'T LIE. Unless it does.

Even if you have never heard of Snow White and the 7 Dwarves (???) there is no way you have never heard the line, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?”  This seems like an okay question to ask a mirror, I think.  I mean, a mirror gets a LOT of customers and MUST have some kind of opinion, right?  But the trouble comes, at least for Snow White, when the mirror tells the truth.  Instead of kissing the Queen’s ass, the mirror offers an honest assessment that hey actually, her stepdaughter is edging her out in the looks department.  And Snow White IS pretty cute!  But would it have killed the mirror to be a little nicer about it?  The Queen isn’t exactly someone to sneeze at, and it would have saved Snow White AND the Queen herself a world of hurt if the mirror could have told what amounts to a little “snow white” lie, see?  So what gives?

I personally enjoy playing a  game I call good mirror/bad mirror.  Whenever I look in any mirror anywhere, I form an opinion of ITS worthiness based on how I look in it.  I turn the tables on the mirror, if you will.  If the mirror doesn’t make me look like the fairest (or slimmest) of them all, then I proclaim it a “bad mirror”.  But if I look pretty good if I do say so myself, then that is a “good mirror”.  See, it’s the mirror’s fault!  And all those “bad” mirrors are clearly just bald faced liars looking for a rumble.  Too bad about the fluorescent lighting and the extra slice of pizza, mirror!  I look puffy and washed out and it’s ALL YOUR FAULT!!!  BWAH HA HA HA HA!  That was my evil Disney Queen laugh, btw.

Have you ever looked at yourself in a fun house mirror?  The ones that can make your legs look two feet long and your torso unending, or give you a giant head and tiny body, or make you hugely fat or disgustingly skinny?  It’s funny, right?  Sometimes you stand and kick those little short legs and laugh, or wag a super long finger in front of your elongated nose.  We enjoy the bizarre images because we KNOW they are not the “truth”…we know we don’t actually look like a space alien, but instead like a denizen of planet earth.  So now I have a challenge for you:  can you decide that ALL mirrors are fun house mirrors?  That what you see reflected back is quite unlike what anyone else sees when they look at you?

I have had days when I leave the house feeling great about myself, only to catch a glimpse of my reflection in a car window that turns my mood upside down…how can I look like THAT???  I looked so good in my bathroom mirror (GOOD MIRROR!) but I look so bad in the car window (BAD MIRROR!).  And I let it spoil my mojo.  Instead of feeling confident, like I did only seconds before, I feel self-conscious.  Self-loathing.  I want to fix my hair, get some botox, change my clothes.  I want to change how I look to change how I feel.  But a) that is always a temporary and transient fix, because another bad mirror could lurk around the next corner and b) do I even have any idea how I look, really?  Do ANY of us?

I was cuddling my son before bed one night and I asked him, “Why are you so beautiful?” and he answered, without a moment of hesitation, “Because I came out of YOU.  You have no idea how beautiful you are.”  Now, I could rationalize this and say, “Well, he’s my baby, of course he thinks I’m beautiful”, or I could generalize this and walk out into the world with a new perspective.  A new perspective that says, “I have no idea how beautiful I am, and NEITHER DO OTHERS REALIZE HOW BEAUTIFUL THEY ARE.”  We have all experienced this with teenagers, when they wear that self-conscious misery on their sleeves and you just want to shake them by the shoulders and yell, “You are so fresh, young and lovely!  BE HAPPY, GODDAMMIT!”  But we have also had a super model friend tell us how “fat” she feels, a handsome and charming man bemoan his balding pate, a woman with a radiant complexion flip out over an imperceivable blemish.  Be happy, goddamit.  All of us.

Photoshop, stop messing with everybody.  "They give those nice bright colors, give us the greens of summers, make us think all the world's a sunny day"...but hey, I've actually met you, and you don't actually look like that picture you are so proud of; you look like you.  I love your crooked teeth, I love your sparkling eyes, I love that little hitch in your walk that you don't notice but allows me to recognize you at 100 paces.  You are more beautiful than you know.  The mirror can't properly reflect that, and neither can a picture.  It can only be seen in another person's eyes.  It can only be known deep in your soul.  You have no idea how beautiful you are, but the time has come to learn.  Even if it feels like a lie at first, remind yourself that the "truth" did not work out so well for the Queen.  Would it kill you to be a little nicer to yourself?  And to the mirrors of the world:  how about you take your opinion and shove it?  The view in here is just fine, thank you very much.

 

 

Why You Are Never Finished

You are never finished.  This may sound scary, stressful and tiring, but it is actually very, very exciting news.  We are such a goal driven society, reaching for accomplishments, milestones, rewards, MORE, and that does leave us feeling exhausted and ironically, empty.  But I am talking about something quite different here…I am not talking prizes, acquisitions or accolades; I am talking about YOU.  The amazing and endless human creature that you are.  YOU are never finished.  You are an ever expanding circle of light, abundant and curious and joyful.  You are inclusive of all things, dark and light, good and bad, high and low.  There is always MORE of you to be discovered, to be experienced.  And make no mistake, it is a discovery, not an invention.  You are all there, all the time, and all you are doing is constantly remembering and re-remembering that.

The best and most effective way we do this is through relationships.  People think of marriage as a fusing of sorts, a uniting of two people into a whole; I say that is not unique to the marriage relationship in the least.   When we connect with another human being we are fused for life, whether we ever see each other again physically (or these days, virtually) or not.  Relationships change us immediately and irrevocably.  Once I have met you, I can never again experience anything in the world as if I had not, and the longer the relationship lasts, the more and more and more I include you.  I am no longer myself without you.  You have become a filter through which I see the world, so I can never see the world the exact same way again.

Consider your parents; this is an obvious choice, as you actually are a fusion of them and you have internalized them in both a literal and figurative embodiment.  But who among us does not carry the voices of our parents (or whoever raised us) around in our heads ALL the time?  So many of our choices have been guided by them, both consciously and unconsciously.  I know people who seem to have lived their whole lives as a reaction AGAINST their parents, and I know people who have lived their whole lives as homage to them.  Parents are with us in every moment, as they are the people who, well…PROGRAMMED us, for lack of a better word.  Hopefully in mostly good ways.  They taught us to walk, talk, tie our shoelaces, ride our bikes; they engendered a love of reading or sports or nature or maybe all of the above.  They are as much a part of us as water is part of the ocean.  We are swirled together forever.

Now think about your friends…the musician you reference when you listen to a song, the doctor you call when you are sure you have a tumor, the teacher whose stories make you feel so much, much better about your own kids.  Or not.  But whoever they are, and whatever they do, they play into how you think, how you approach the world, how you perceive different situations.  The unique perspective they have shared with you has transformed your own; you can never eat a salad without thinking about what your gardener buddy has told you about pesticides or growing heirloom tomatoes.  Every time you read a book a friend recommended, you read it with them; why did they like it?  What clues to their personality are hidden in the story?  Every time you go to a restaurant you went to with your chums, you are there with them again…every time you drive down his street, hear that song or remember her story.  We carry our loved ones around with us all the time.

They say white is the color we see when all colors on the spectrum are present simultaneously; I say this is a good definition of God.  When all things are present simultaneously, the slate is completely clean.  When we include all things, we know God.  And that is what our relationships are for, even (and possibly especially) our challenging ones.  As we incorporate more and more and more of others into ourselves, we become more and more and more inclusive…closer to the entire spectrum, closer to God.  Even your cantankerous old uncle with the appalling political beliefs (or religious beliefs, or prejudices) that you have to kiss on the cheek every Thanksgiving is bringing you closer to knowing wholeness.  We are all necessary, we are all in this together and we are all helping each other every minute of every day whether we are trying (or want to) or not.  So keep on loving (or hating) every single person you meet.  That feeling you have for them means you are carrying them with you.  You are becoming more complete.  But wonderfully, you will never be finished.  Because someone and something new awaits you around each and every corner.

WHY GODZILLA NEEDS A LITTLE MORE R-E-S-P-E-C-T

I just saw Godzilla.  Maybe you are thinking about going to see it too?  Giant monster destroying cities, what is not to love, am I right???  Well, just in case it is on your bucket list, you can go ahead and stop reading this.  Stop reading now.  Unless you want a total blow-by-blow breakdown of why it TOTALLY SUCKED. Or blew, your choice.

Not the monster itself, of course.  The monster was great!!!  And in a neat twist on the old Godzilla premise, he is actually one of the good guys!  “WHAT?????” you say?  "Godzilla is a GOOD GUY????  Doesn’t that make him TOTALLY UNSCARY????"  In a word, YES.  Yes, it does.  But he was still great.  Lovely to look at, and all that.

Not so lovely to look at was Bryan Cranston’s wig.  Wtf was that?  They drop 100 million dollars and can’t manage to scrounge up a convincing hairpiece?  Seriously, it was a good thing he (spoiler alert) DIED so early in the film without resolving any of his open ended plot points because all I could think about when he was onscreen was the hedgehog on his head.  And let’s address the “15 years later” moment when we all breathed a sigh of relief, thinking this MUST be the explanation for the bad rug, because “15 years later” he will be losing his hair and look like a normal person again.  But wait a minute…wait a fucking minute here…”15 years later” after living through a nuclear incident, the devastating loss of his wife and the stress of trying to discover the truth behind what really happened, the man is still in full follicle.  That ridiculous thing is still in residence on his scalp.  Did I say wtf yet?

So the lead of the movie, after several red herrings with talented stars we recognize, was some kid I’ve never seen before.  Now, that does not mean he is not a star; he may very well be.  But I don’t have a clue in the universe who he is and after watching him for 2+ hours, I don’t care to know.  Were the charismatic leads all booked?  Or did they get a load of the FUCKING AWFUL script and allow the best boy’s nephew to take over the role?  I didn’t care if this kid lived or died, and that would have been fun if he had actually gotten eaten or something good like that.  But he managed to survive being 5 minutes away from a nuclear blast that would have made Hiroshima “look like a firecracker” completely unscathed.  Darn the luck!  And the writing.

He was also briefly teamed up with a nameless Asian child for no discernable reason.  No point to it, making it seem both vaguely racist and also from some previous version of the script.  Maybe this was a tip of the hat to “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”?  Maybe the name “Ford” was a tip of the hat to Harrison?  Maybe I don’t care in the least.  Actually, there was a LOT of hat tipping, from “Jaws” to “Jurassic Park” (hmmm, perhaps this was meant as homage to Spielberg?) but sadly all it did was remind me that this was not “Jaws” or “Jurassic Park” and it was a damn crying shame, too.  My kingdom for a “Smile, you son-of-a-bitch” moment!  This movie was more akin to “Airplane” than any of the classic creature features, mainly because I could not stop thinking to myself, “I guess I picked the wrong day to quit sniffing glue!”

And how about the other monsters?  I know, I know, GODZILLA is monster enough for ANYBODY…except these particular film makers, who thought they would throw in a little CGI lameness to spice up the proceedings and give Godzilla a formidable foe or two.  You know, I could watch Godzilla take down the Golden Gate Bridge all day long, folks!  Godzilla wreaking havoc with his giant Godzilla-ness would have been good enough for me, especially if there were a little heart and characters I felt for…but NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!  They had to throw in this interminable plot about the other (much faker, much less interesting) monsters.  I would like right now to offer some kudos to Ken Watanabe, who seemed as bored and frustrated as I was.  Thanks, Ken, I appreciate your empathy!!!  Next time don’t trick me into seeing a shitty movie with your respectable name!  Double that to YOU, Mr. David Straithairn!!!

I recently saw “Sharknado” and was amazed at how sharks flying out of the sky and swallowing people whole could seem dull.  But “Sharknado” was Mardi Gras compared to this thing.  Godzilla, Hollywood has DONE YOU WRONG.  You didn’t deserve it in the least, ESPECIALLY now that we know you are actually one of the GOOD GUYS.  Hey buddy, whadda you say you wreak a little havoc in tinsel town, see if you can’t scare up some decent scripts and actors with a little self-respect.  And charisma, while you are at it.  For all your good intentions, you are still a pretty intimidating character, after all.  Don’t be shy, go ahead and ask for what you want, which at the end of the day is just a little respect, am I right?  For your fans and moviegoers, too.

WHY IT'S NOT EASY BEING GREEN (but it's okay)

When I was in the 6^th grade, someone called me a frog.  Don’t get me wrong; although this was clearly a lowlight of that year, I remember 6^th grade as generally being the deepest depths of adolescent misery, so being compared to an amphibian was simply adding insult to injury.  In defense of the (mean!) person who (actually implied) this, I was not a pretty thing to look at.  I was starting puberty and my lanky body was quite suddenly lumpy.  The glasses I wore “for distance” abruptly became the glasses I wore “all the time”.  And I had braces.  And for some reason, I decided this was the perfect time to cut my long blonde hair short.  It was an awkward stage, to put it mildly.  To make matters worse, we had just moved to a new town and a new school and I had all the wrong clothes and an (understandably) terrible attitude.  Ah, youth!

So my parents enrolled me in Wednesday night CCD classes at our church, as if things weren’t bad enough.  You’d have to know my parents to understand why they thought this would be a good place for me to make friends and integrate into our new community; you’d have to know me to understand why it was not.  The night “it” happened, the teachers challenged us to be more like Jesus…music to a preteen’s ears!  Ha.  Their suggestion for how to do this was to “kiss a frog”.  You know, like in the frog prince.  Just because someone isn’t good looking, doesn’t have the right clothes and isn’t cool doesn’t mean they aren’t worthy of attention and possibly even affection.  Even a frog might have some kind of value.  So after class, as I was waiting for my parents to pick me up, one of the most beautiful and popular girls in my school came over and said “hi” to me.  And I said “hi” back.  But inside, I was sick.  Because I fully understood what had just happened…that beautiful and popular girl had just kissed a frog.

I’m not popular.  I’ve never been popular.  By the time I was in 8th grade I had contacts, the braces came off, my hair grew in and my body normalized back to lanky.  I had a lot of wonderful friends, many of whom still bless my life today.  Even the beautiful and popular girl who had wounded me so badly and I were on good terms.  But I still wasn’t popular. Because being popular (at least in the “popular” sense of the word) is not about being well liked and socially accepted; popular is a state of being.  Because being popular, (contrary to “popular” opinion), is not so much about beauty, brains, clothes, cars, fads or trends…it’s about the place you sit in your soul and how you move in this world.  If you are popular, you can’t disguise it, not even in a Wal-Mart leotard.  You’re wearing it?  That automatically makes it COOL.

The same goes for being a nerd.  If you are a nerd, you have nerdism in your very soul.  Sorry about that.  You can try to dress that shit up, but it still smells, looks, tastes and feels nerdy.  All those “geek to chic” movies are selling you a bill of goods.  You ARE a NERD, to the very core of your being, and ain’t nothing going to change that.  Nothing you can add to your outside, anyway.  And I like nerds!  I am personally more of a geek than a nerd, but I still have a soft spot in my heart for any teenager who carries a briefcase or wears a pocket protector.  We need you nerds!  Never change!  And let’s face it, you probably couldn’t even if you wanted to…psych!

We are all, to some degree or another, playing with the hand we got dealt; some of us are traditionally beautiful, but most of us, not so much.  A few people are truly brilliant, some really smart and then…there’s the rest of the planet.  There are athletes and mathletes, freaks and geeks (no, not the same thing), Gingers and Mariannes, Studs and Duds, frogs and princes, Hillarys and…Kardashians.  That’s what makes a horse race, friends!  And there is the degree to which we self-identify and accept who we are, and then there is the degree to which we struggle against our own nature our whole lives.  Because we have been appraised of the differences and which ones are deemed “good” and which ones are deemed “bad” and we all want to be ALL GOOD, ALL the TIME.  At least in other people’s opinions, if not our own. 

But you know what?  I AM A GEEK.  I get ridiculously excited watching “Sherlock” on PBS, I still kind of love the Monkees, the 70’s were my favorite decade to date and Stephen King (the MASTER of ALL GEEKS) is my most preferred living author.  Ha ha ha!  See???  GEEK CITY.  And I have learned to love that about myself, why not? I’ll never be interested in fashion (Zzzzz), I am ALWAYS going to be WAY behind on any hot trends (because wtf???), and I am never going to care about the kind of car you drive or how much money you make.  I am only impressed or pleased by WHO YOU ARE, not anything you added on to yourself.  The great news?  I’ve found that “who most people are” is pretty damned endearing and often very interesting.  I really do genuinely like the vast majority of people I meet.  Total geek thing to say, I know.

See, that is the real message of the frog prince…it is always about what is going on inside of you, not outside, that really counts.  If you can live up to your own standards and let people have their own without (too much) judgment, then you are going to be a pretty happy person.  If you go to bed at night knowing you did alright by your inner geek or freak or nerd or diva or Type-A or FROG or whatever you truly are, then you are going to be content.  Trying to twist yourself into a format you were never meant to live by will bring you nothing but confusion and frustration.  Figure out who you REALLY are (you already know, come on!!!) and go there.  Go there without concern for what others will think because it doesn’t matter.  If they want to spoil their day thinking about how much they disapprove of you, that is their loss.

WHY YOUR INNER "DISNEY PRINCESS" ROCKS!!!

Years ago when we were all still single, a girlfriend of mine developed a humorous theory that women follow a dating template based on their favorite Disney movie relationship.  Girls who loved Cinderella were hardworking optimists who were not opposed to being swept off their feet.  Girls who loved Little Mermaid might change who they are to suit their man.  Girls who loved Belle from Beauty and the Beast were fiercely intelligent, brave and willing to take on a challenge.  Ladies who loved tramps…well, you know who you are. 

She had a lot of fun questioning all of us about our favorite film without revealing her premise until AFTER we had explained the attachment.  And you know what?  In her small case study, women did pretty consistently conform to their favorite Disney heroine’s path.  At least, until she asked me.

You want to know what my favorite Disney movie was growing up?  The Sword and the Stone. 

When I made this response to her inquiry, I saw real concern develop in her brow.  “But why?” she asked, genuinely perplexed, “I mean, what is it that appeals to you so much?”  I answered with complete enthusiasm, “It’s about a kid who lives with his Uncle and his cousin and they treat him like a servant and call him Wart but then MERLIN teaches him magic and he pulls the sword out of the stone and becomes the KING OF ENGLAND!!!” 

Now, if you don’t know me, you might think this blows her theory totally out of the water.  But while I will not speak for any of my ex-boyfriends, I am pretty sure my husband thinks not only that I might have some magical powers, but also that he is, in fact, married to the King of England.  Ha.

Albert Einstein once said, “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”  The stories that resonate with us as children are the stories that speak to our souls, to who-we-really-are, and to who we hope to become. 

As a Mom I have had the pleasure of re-reading some of my favorite childhood books with my son and it has been a powerful and moving experience to be sure.  I loved “The Wind in the Willows” as a child, but as an adult I am going to posit that it may be the greatest children’s book ever written.  It hits all of the right notes, from self-acceptance and self-expression to cooperation, sharing, taking risks, knowing God as all-encompassing…but to a child, it is a charming adventure of animals living on a riverbank.  I was in awe reading it again as to how it spoke to my life path and the many relationships and other “adventures” I have experienced.

I will tell you what got me thinking about all of this: the post “How Disney Sabotaged Our Love Lives” on the HuffPo.   It compelled me to write this as some kind of rebuttal.  First of all, other than the title, there is barely a mention of Disney, per se, and how can one blame an institution for high divorce rates and then provide such scant evidence?  The real title of this article should have been “How the notion of a soul mate sabotaged our love lives” and I say PHOOEY ON THAT!

Soul mates rock!!!!  And most of us have a plethora of them, not just that antiquated notion of a one-true-love.  Soul mates are people you recognize instantly; you have that shock of “Oh, there you are!” with a total stranger.  And it is not only NOT exclusively a romantic attachment, it is USUALLY not…most of my best friends in the world are people with whom I had an instant click, a sense of home, of belonging.  The notion that hoping to marry a soul mate is somehow destructive to your romantic dreams is kind of mean-spirited, IMHO.

A thing that speaks to your soul, whether it be a book, movie, song, painting or person…these are the things that matter most in this world.  Without them, we are lost.  These are talisman, markers on our path that tell us we are headed in the right direction, that keep us on course, that remind us to hope for the best but also know we have the resources to handle the worst. 

Your soul is that most amazing and resilient piece of you, both highly individualized and yet connected to every living thing on earth.  When it is activated by anything…your work, your play, your relationships, your religion…this is a very, very good thing, the best possible thing in fact.  Disney does not sabotage us any more than any other piece of art, if it resonates with us. 

Just, as I am living proof of, not all girls are destined to be princesses.  Some of us are kings.