7 Things I really need to get the heck over

Or, you know how sometimes you say you should do something but never do it? Yeah, me too.

1. One time in preschool I got a frownie face

We had to trace our hands then draw a watch on the wrist. I made my watch strap go across diagonally because it seemed like that would be really cool and colored the hand and wrist in rainbow stripes. The teacher drew a frownie face on it. I still do not know why. What, did she think I’d not observed over the years that most watches go straight across and most hands are flesh colored? Hello! Nobody told me not to do it, and as I completed the assignment and turned it in, I should have got FULL CREDIT not some bs editorializing about my aesthetic choices.

2. Speaking of intelligence

Once, I had to go to a psychologist for an evaluation because I was depressed, don’t want to get into that story now but when he left the room, I took a peek at what he’d written on the chart: “Intelligence: dull normal”. Damn, no wonder I was depressed, I was stupid for all these years and didn’t know it! That would make anyone kind of sad, I think. I want to go back to his office and show him my blog and say “Would a person who was both DULL and NORMAL be able to do this? Huh? HUH?!?!”

Can they commit you for doing that? If somebody tells me they can’t I am totally going back and doing it. Closure, I need closure.

3. My second son was a very cute, very blond baby

That’s not the problem, the problem was every day for the first two years of his life strangers on the street would run up to us and look at his platinum blond head and big blue eyes and say “Oh my goodness, he’s so cute! He must look like his daddy!”

Yeah, I know what they meant. Don’t care. 12 hours of back labor, even if his daddy’s name was Brad Pitt, I think I should get all credit for cuteness.

4. The monks never came for me

When I was a kid, I had this deep, instinctive feeling I was special. Then I heard about Tibetan monks going around looking for reincarnations of lamas and it all made sense. So I waited and waited and waited for them to come and take me away from a life of ordinary that clearly didn’t suit me and they never came.

They never came.

Tell me, how do you get over that?

5. This one time, on the hit tv series “That’s Incredible” a boy was on

They called him the smartest kid in the world. That pissed me right the heck off, because although I might not have been good at say math or reading or history or mechanical engineering, it didn’t really seem like this kid was all that much smarter than I was. Yeah, sure if I wanted to I could have learned all that stuff, but I believed children should enjoy their childhoods. Wise beyond my years, I was.

6. My dad and sister and brother made fun of me once

Well, actually it was a lot of times and usually my mother joined in, but this one time particularly stands out. I’d made a VERY PRIVATE tape recording of me practicing singing and my sister found it and played it for my dad and brother and they all laughed and laughed and mocked and mocked. You know what though? At least I was trying something, at least I was putting myself out there. I think they should confess that they’ve always admired my bravery and tenacity in some very loud and public way. Tracythebraveandtenacious.com is available and although I could mock them back if they put a One True Media style slideshow of my bravery and tenacity on there, I wouldn’t. I would be touched.

And avenged. But mostly it’s about the touching.

7. My mom spanked me once

For trying to make watermelon rind pickles in an old margarine tub like they did in Little House on the Prairie. I mean, I know they didn’t have margarine tubs back then, but I made do with what we had. I also didn’t realize you needed salt and vinegar to make pickles, so I just put them in there with some water and it all got rancidly moldy. So, I can understand why my mom was perturbed, but it seems to me she should have put that aside and took a moment to appreciate my can do pioneer spirit.

There’s a lot more, but these are the main ones. You can tell me what you need to get over in the comments, if you want. That’s if you aren’t too busy trying to head up the committee to give me the banquet I so richly deserve for overcoming so much.

Tagged as: how not to make watermelon rind pickles, That's incredible, Tracy the tenacious and brave