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Friday, September 6, 2013

But Am I Still Pretty?

Yesterday, I was looking over my books on Amazon. I was doing obsessive things like examining sales charts, reading reviews and analyzing data by geographic region. ThenI came across this humbling review

"Unfortunately, the title was the funniest thing in the whole book. This is a collection on barely amusing, tedious, little stories."

for

I cascaded through several stages of emotion. First, I succumbed to shock. How could someone say such a thing, even if she is from Wisconsin, a state notorious for its lack of humor?

Next, I experienced anger. The thought, How could someone say such a thing, took on a different tone. To be so rude and insensitive to another person is plain wrong. Didn't her mama ever tell her that if she couldn't say anything nice, not to say anything at all? The nerve!

Alas, I was stricken with sadness and grief. I'd let a reader down. I wracked my brain in an effort to determine where I'd gone wrong.Was it my calculation of my wedding anniversary in dog years that left her flat? Did she find my admission that a little girl down the street spotted a dead roach in my house offensive? Or was the fact that I've dubbed the child Little Miss Bad Cholesterol due to her monogram, LDL, the turn off? I revealed, in print no less, that I strolled down a long hallway past my peers with my skirt shoved deep in my underwear. Could she not even giggle at that?

I did dedicate two entire pages to the communist pig roast that my brothers hosted in Mississippi. Maybe she's a communist. Maybe she has something against my brothers.

Maybe she's one of those people who doesn't know how to laugh at life's inevitable comedy of errors. Thus, her negativity has nothing to do with me or Tuck Your Skirt in Your Panties and Run and everything to do with her unfortunate personality, as we call the condition here in the South. In that case, I'm obliged to pray for her.

My feelings are hurt, but after working through my emotions, I'm perking up.

Nonetheless, that hasn't stopped me from desperately calling out, like the 40-year-old bridesmaid wearing cornflower blue, "But I'm still pretty, right?"

1 comment:

William Kendall said...

We can't please everyone!

An unfortunate personality. I do like that!

And the state of Wisconsin would like to have a word with you.