Guamania
The M*Inerny diaspora has reached a new level. For those of you who didn't get the family Christmas card, where again I'm the one pulling a dumb face, my Dad is in California, my older brother in Philadelphia, and my Mom and sister are holding down the fort in Minneapolis. Patrick has been serving his time in the Navy (cue strobe lights and flamboyant dancing) in Florida and now in Mississippi, where he is in training with the Sea Bees.
Patrick recently called to tell us that he was going to be stationed in Iraq, which was a joke, since he is really going to Guam. That's the kind of joke I can really get behind, kind of like the April Fool's Joke I played where I told my family I was engaged and was dropping out of college. And by April Fool's Joke I mean a three-week lie that I told for my own enjoyment. My mom got such a kick out of it that she ignored me for two weeks.
Say what you want about the military (well, don't say it around me) but I credit it with giving my little brother a tall glass of grow the hell up. Patrick was a kid who twice overslept the noon shift at his job as a bagboy. He was a kid for whom "hard work" meant dumpster diving at Wuollet's bakery for some day-old muffins. He was a kid who broke my tailbone after I punched him in the face for stealing the remote. {Middle child comment: After hearing my bone break, I shouted the F word. I was sent to my room. Patrick got to watch TV all night}. Now, he's got two standard-issue biceps, earned through his hard work on the U.S.S. Carney. He has nice posture. He knows how to iron almost as well as my father. And he looks so cute in his uniform. I'm very proud of my baby brother, even though he no longer has adorably chubby cheeks.
So, like others before him (cue the Felicity soundtrack) Patrick heads off into the great unknown of the Pacific. I see a vacation to Guam in my future, and a possible handful of illegitimate half-Asian babies in his. I'm talking about adoption, Mom.
Nora, I'm really looking forward to reading your first novel. Of course, I expect to be a character, and I also would like a free copy. But I can't wait to read it.
I'm so happy that _____ (insert word of choice) brought you into my life and honestly I'm glad you don't work for me anymore so we could enhance a true friendship where you won't feel boundaries. Nonetheless, I read through a lot of your blog and I think what makes you a great writer isn't your choice of words or your descriptions or your sentence structure (all carefully thought out and perfect) but the fact that engage the reader so that it makes me click onto the next link. Characters from your life come alive in your writing. You are one of the few truly worthy of this microcosmic space on the vast thing we call the Internet. Had you lived in the Jane Austen days, you would have given her a run for her P&P ... or anything you wanted for that matter. Kudos. LOVE NORA!!!
I remember that practical joke. I was amused. I think I should orchestrate something like that for my parents, but not around April 1. That'd be too obvious. Would you like to call up my Dad as his long-lost daughter/sister/lover?
As for your writing, I won't inflate your head any more like your former boss. Nor will I spill that I am, in fact, your ghostwriter.
Your novel? Why write a novel when your life story would be so much more interesting. Then, Jay and I would be assured of having roles. Memoirs are the new novel. Then the question becomes, who will play us in the film version? (Adapted for the screen by Tony McCosham). You're already set: Scarlett Johansson for the grownn-up you, and that girl from the Sprint commercial for the teenage you.