08 2 / 2012
A Really Weak Apology to My Family for Using Them as Blog Fodder
Dear reader, if you’ve been kind enough to travel along with me on this blogging journey, two things have probably become obvious: 1) I don’t proofread for typos well and 2) maintaining my privacy is not high on my list of priorities. It’s certainly well below avoiding confrontations with giant rodents. I would not be writing to you in the first place if not for the simple fact that I am a Chatty Cathy with a big fat mouth that’s a little too willing to disclose the first thought that hops into my head, which 99% of the time is about food, random odors, or how awesome it would be to birth Derek Jeter’s children.
If loose lips sink ships, then that Costa Concordia thing was totally me and not the skeezy conductor. Too soon to make mediocre jokes about it? Damn it! Well, see, I’m shooting off my mouth again.
If my friends from college are reading this post, I can picture them nodding along in understanding, remembering the Emily who would waltz into the dining hall and happily announce she wasn’t wear any panties because she was out of clean pairs. They’ll recall the lass who couldn’t wait to be asked a probing question in Truth or Dare, sitting herself just a tad too hard on the old college futon and snapping the wooden legs with the force of her derriere, a tale she then shared with her academic adviser later that week.
For better or for worse, I am particularly loose lipped when I’m writing, or as the great Carrie Bradshaw would say “emotionally slutty.” I couldn’t help but wonder… nope, not copping to a Sex and the City cliche yet!… well, actually, I really can’t help but wonder if there’s something about not having actual face-to-face contact that enables me (and many others) to disclose over the internet things that go in the “not even appropriate to share on a third date” category.
A quick run through of the things I have revealed on this blog; aside from the general concerns regarding unemployment, body issues, and slowly wrinkling into Little Edie of Grey Gardens (of the 1975 documentary, not the 2009 HBO special), I’ve discussed incidents of horrifying drunkeness, my weak bladder, my willingness to let my younger brother freeze barefoot outside our home, and my love of Glee.
It’s all well and good if I want to tarnish my own reputation and thwart all potential for future babysitting jobs (yup, I know I harp on babysitting-take that as a reflection of my financial/social state). However, I’ve come to realize that I have been exposing a few other folks along the way, namely the two people who gave me life, and the two people most likely to be kidney matches. Kudos to me for exploiting those precious and potentially life-saving familial relations for the sake of a few pithy comments!
In all honesty, I’ve felt a little uneasy writing about my family for a while now. That was not my initial plan when I started this blog, but a few things make it difficult not to write about them. For one, now that I am living at home, they are the people with whom I spend a large chunk of my time, so they’re inevitably going to pop up in a post. For another, if you had a younger brother with a penchant for Ebonics and a father who almost killed you changing a light fixture, you’d write about them, too. Just as it says in Anna Karenina, “All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Every Brady Bunch family is super boring, but every funny/neurotic family is funny/neurotic in its own way. BTW, Mom and Dad, please take note that I am quoting Tolstoy; even though I still can’t correctly read a Metro-North train schedule, I’m finding a way to put that expensive college education to use.
On that note, Mom, Dad, my two little future kidney donors, I want to apologize. Most likely, only 25% of the Shire clan is reading this, but I still want to use this time to say I’m sorry for taking permission carte blanche to write about us. I’m even sorrier that I may not be using “carte blanche” correctly and am further sullying the family name. Most of all, I am sorry because, whether it has sunken in or not, you’ve taught me to value privacy. This goes beyond the fact that my father always instructed me not to disclose my social security number on College Board exams because its “none of their freakin’ business,” or that when I wrote a complaint letter about my fifth grade teacher, it wasn’t enough not to sign it anonymously; my mother wanted to copy it over in different handwriting, lest they perform a graphology exam or match it to my ELA test booklet (Ironically, as a result of my grandmother’s pride in how eloquent a complainer I was, the letter was never submitted and is in safekeeping in her apartment).
My family has taught me how to appreciate and love trustworthy people, the ones you can expose the truly devastating, embarrassing, vulnerable things about yourself to, things even worse than admitting you cried during Disney’s Tarzan and had to pee six times during the course of it. Thus, I hope they are not too offended and will forgive me if the elastic waistband around my sense of discretion snaps, and I share a little too much.
Fingers-crossed they will. Because when I do fully evolve into batty and bald Little Edie, I’m relying on them to subtly hide me in the guest bedroom and tell the neighbors I’ve moved to Boca.
