This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 at 9:31 pm and is filed under General Word Vomit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
I talk a good game. Whether it’s because I’m delusional or just overconfident to a fault, I’m not entirely sure. But I rock. Just ask me.
The problem is that my awesomeness apparently has a few limits, and when challenged often makes me look more like a carnival prize than the jewel in a window at Tiffany’s I fancy myself to be.
My guy is beginning to discover this, and it has me worried. It’s not that I don’t want him to see me as I really am; I’d just rather my quirks weren’t quite so vivid in contrast to my bravado. Because although I’ve never lied about myself, I may have oversold certain “good” traits to compensate for the more freakish of my lot.
My love of horror movies, for example, is legendary. I’ll spend hours describing the intricate beauty of torture or re-enacting scenes from 70s exploitation movies and have consequently erected the façade that nothing scares me.
And it’s true – to a degree. Blood, screams, chainsaw wielding maniacs… none of it has an effect. But should a June bug start hurtling itself at the light fixture on my guy’s patio, I will, without hesitation, dart under the nearest chair and whimper uncontrollably.
“It’s just a June bug/cicada/grasshopper/20-pound thunder moth,” my guy will say whenever I have a shrieking fit over whatever creature lunges for me. “Don’t worry. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Really, I appreciate the sentiment when it comes to keeping me safe from predators in parking garages, purse snatchers and scary mechanics at the vehicle emissions facility. But until he can control the flight path of a locust or the proximity of all the centipedes in a 20-mile radius, my guy is going to have to accept kissing me through the mesh of a bee keeper suit if he wants my company on his porch.
Still, for as terrified as I am of the back porch, my guy is likely just as terrified to enter a bathroom after I’ve been in there styling my hair. I make no secret about how important my hair is to me, and how much effort I put into making it look spectacular. So my guy wasn’t surprised when he first realized it takes me two hours to wash, blow dry and style my hair for the day.
But there’s no way of bracing someone for the ruins I leave in my hair styling wake, and I can only hope my guy possesses a shop vac and industrial cleanser.
“What were you doing in here, trimming a yeti?”
I can’t say that I blame my guy for his astounded look as he surveyed his bathroom one morning. The writhing mass of broken red hair strands tangled around his drain, bath mat and cabinet counter looked more like tentacles than something from my head.
I could only shrug. There is a price to pay for repeated heat styling; I’m guessing my guy just didn’t expect to have to pay it in jugs of Drain-O or Swiffer refills.
(I’d rather not discuss the side effects of my color-depositing conditioner. I’m sure they’ll come up soon enough.)
The closer my guy and I get, the more my illusion of cool confidence cracks: He’s seen the backseat of my car, experienced the stench of two-day old unwashed dishes in my sink, and likely pulled errant strands of my hair out of canned vegetables.
Rather than let him bag me up and ship me to Ripley’s Odditorium, I figured I’d put my confirmed talents to use and try to find a way to one-up my guy. The answer: challenging him to a high stakes game of Scrabble. Enter over-inflated self confidence:
“It really is going to be sad to kick your ass,” I told my guy one night. “I’d hate to see you cry. You do know that words like “doggie” and “kitty” aren’t legal Scrabble words, right?”
He bantered back accordingly, but there was no stopping me. I may have even pat my guy on the head and done a preliminary winner’s dance around him. Which would have been fine if I had actually won the damn game.
Instead, after more than an hour of heated play (and, I admit, a few dirty tricks to distract him) I was forced to concede defeat to my guy, who played a far better game that I did. He was gracious enough to not gloat too much about the double digit point spread between us; I was composed enough to not flip the board onto the floor and stomp off to pout.
It was a stinging loss for a girl who makes her living off words, especially when all her words of late seem to be unfounded. Fortunately, my guy doesn’t see me as the bug-cowering, shedding Yeti loser that I do at times. To him, I’m still the smart woman who lets him show off his bug catching prowess and can keep him on his toes at all times, and I couldn’t be happier about that.
That hasn’t stopped him from insisting I call him Scrabble Master, of course, but I’m okay with that. He’s earned the title…. Until the rematch, that is.
September 5th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
You must redeem yourself! Reclaim the title from Slasher McTauntbooger!!!