If you are a band, and you have more than one keyboard, you have likely lost me. If there are more photographers than fans in the audience, also lost me. Men wearing utilikilts lose me. Real kilts are fine, when legitimate. Bands with male members who wear white pants with white shoes are also in danger of losing me. I'll admit that pedal steel is like an anti-losing measure that succeeds with me nine times out of ten.
My Myers-Briggs type is ENFP, which means that guilt is like my kryptonite, which means that guilt trips are a very effective way to lose me. A corollary would be that you may ask once if you think my migraines are caused by stress, but if you have a not-so-secret pet theory that they are - Lost me. Capital L. I'm not going to say that requiring me to take my shoes off in your house will lose me, but you are tip-toeing up to it if you have not told me that in advance. Having a living room that no one goes into will complicate this entire issue. When I was a teenager, adults could lose me by commenting on my acne and suggesting remedies, and I think that was fair. If you made a comment about whether or not I picked my pimple, please know that your nose job, tacky affairs and white shag rug were talked about behind your back with no remorse on my part. Insisting that I never be petty will lose me, though it's true that as an older person, I try a little harder not to be.
My mother and her friends lost me and my pimple once. Same teenage years, somewhere on a road trip where the party of dogs and grown-ups and kids was split between two cars. I wore headphones and waited near the plant identification sign and as mad as I was, I still had to try not to cry. They only ever kind-of found me again.
I hope I have never lost you. We wanted to use our living room more, but the TV was in the other room... ;)
ReplyDeleteYour specificity is always a teacher to me. How to talk about these kinds of things in the familiar meets illuminating sort of way. The opposite of this was a reading I went to where the writer read a scene where her mother left her in her childhood bedroom immediately followed by a scene in a bedroom where she worries she might someday want to leave her own daughter - not that she actually wants to, because that would be awful. She looked up gravely at the end, as if hoping against hope that we would be able to connect the dots...
Ha, not eeeeven close to losing me! Your house was nice without being precious, and I'm pretty sure we sat in the living room at least once when I was there. :-)
ReplyDeleteThaaank you!!
I like the way you circle around from the safer ways of being lost to the more heartbreaking kind all with that same attentive level of specificity that Tami mentioned. A little sneaky the way this catches you between bold confessions and humor.
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