Mopping Up Misconceptions

For once and for all, I would like to address a few oversights still lingering around the perimeter of my online persona. This is a blog of pure self-indulgence, dear reader, proceed or not, the choice is yours. But let it not be said I withheld an iota of my true nature.
For quick reference, here are but a few of the things some of you have said about me in the recent past. Forgive my not quoting you by name.
1) Intelligent, happy, fun, deep thinker, spiritual, warm, and tenacious.
2) …a dear and gracious soul.
3) …a Mary Poppins sort...you know-- "Pleasingly perfect in every way.”
4) …you are clearly a strong woman. roar.
5) you are: 1). brutally honest; 2). Interesting; 3). A perfect girl next door in thought and appearance...
I have chosen these particular descriptors for several reasons. First, they were available without digging too deeply into the blog archives. Second, each of these gave me a moment’s pause when I first read them. A flinching second of “…hmm. What gave them that idea?”
I do have a thinly-applied veneer of most of these lovely qualities. I come from a long line of intelligent, gracious, strong, honest, interesting, spiritual people; the simple proximity of so much goodness was bound to rub off a little.
Perfect example- Sunday’s paper contained this huge article about my dad. Too bad you can’t see the accompanying pics.
http://sun.yumasun.com/google/ysarchive25677.html
(My mom says the reporter took some adjectival license and over-dramatized a bit- but nevertheless…)
When followed by a phone call from my brother on Monday- he was at the airport, on his was to Haiti for the fourth time. They’re building a school for a desperately poor village there, and this time he’s setting up a free hot lunch program for the kids. And then there’s my sister- ER nurse-- Florence Nightingale incarnate…
Get the picture? While I’ve been surrounded by nothing but good examples, left to my own devices, I’m the family snark. I’m the bossy, picky, selfish, bitchy perfectionist in the bunch. I have a tendency toward brutal vanity, egocentrism, and an acid tongue. My expectations for myself and others are extremely high: good grades, good character, good grammar, good grooming. I surround myself with a constant stream of pretty little luxuries; from that perfect cup of coffee upon rising, to the finest bedding money can buy that shrouds me as I sleep- my world will smell, sound, feel, taste, and look as delicious as I can possibly make it.
Manipulation is my middle name. I mold myself and my surroundings to fit my needs. I believe this nimbleness is due in part to being a child of children of the Depression. Find a way. Make it work. I can have a Victorian home in the Sonoran Desert. I can raise bright, beautiful, articulate children in an increasingly plastic world. I can become a published author in my forties. Try to stand in my way.
If my tolerance level for bigotry, ignorance, homophobia, pettiness, and pretentiousness were the water table; the world would be swimming right now. And good riddance to those who brought on our submersion. (I only hope I wasn’t the Red Cross lifeguard who taught their lessons-- they’d be too competent. I hope it was the giggling bimbo from the other session.)
Even as I wrote it, the above list made me laugh. These are among the most despised human qualities imaginable to me, and yet I willingly spend my days in a Middle School- a veritable breeding ground for such thinking. I’ll say it again. My classroom is my last-chance battleground. I will use all weaponry available to me in literature and thought to question and quash those ideologies before releasing my students on society.
I’ve wound myself down now- suffice to say-- just know I don’t want to give the false impression of sweetness and light when I see my own countenance as being closer to vinegar and steel.
Except I refuse to corrode.