Yeehaw, mucka lucka!

I'm reading Jenny Lawson's (aka, The Bloggess) book, Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir. It is awesome. It is funny and honest and just crazy enough to be real. She talks about random crap from her childhood - her father was a weird taxidermist (as opposed to a normal taxidermist), she went to a seriously strange agricultural high school, her first time trying acid led to a deep exploration of the concept of Smurfs - but she also talks about really painful things, even if it's with a funny anecdote. An entire chapter is about her miscarriages and another about her struggle with generalized anxiety disorder. I've never had a miscarriage, but I do struggle with anxiety so I found that chapter pretty amazing. She writes that she wants to hide under tables and in the bathroom; I want to pull my comforter over my head and hold onto a pillow until the room stops spinning and I can breathe again. I don't have the social anxiety she does, but I love her retelling of stories she's told while feeling socially anxious (e.g. getting stabbed in the face by a serial killer who turned out to be her cat, warnings against necrophilia, swallowing needles that turned out to not really be needles). She said she often gets awkward silences and wary stares. I think that's ridiculous! #1, if someone is telling a story about not really getting stabbed in the face by a not real serial killer, you need to hear that shit out. We've all been there - telling a story that's falling miserably flat - so have some sympathy, and if it's a story about a near-stabbing by a not-serial killer that's definitely worth a few minutes of our time. And #2, if someone is telling a story about necrophilia and they're getting uncomfortable and you can tell their mind is trying to figure out how to escape to the bathroom or under a table, help a sister out and engage in the story. And then maybe offer to show her where the bathroom is.

So I'm not done with the book yet, but I'm caught in the paradox of wanting to do nothing but read and wanting it to last forever. I'm now reading about her dad the taxidermist dropping a sack of live ducklings into the middle of a room with her daughter and nieces/nephews. You just can't make that stuff up.