Of all of the things in my life that I am good at, Getting In Trouble is hands down my specialty.
It started when I was a nice little girl and all of the things that seemed like Really Good Ideas at the time ended up being exactly what my mother was not hoping for in a nice little girl. Like being mean to my even nicer little sister. Or cutting my bald-until-four-years-old cousin's hair off when she was five. Or sending fan mail to Christian Bale after I saw Newsies. Or running away on a black and hot pink ten speed bicycle to the payphone at Ronnie D's where I called my aunt and she sent me packing right back home on that hot mess of a bike.
It continued into my adult(ish) years in a religious community where my shirts were too tight, my house was too messy, my music was too sensual and I was an unsubmitted nightmare of a wife and mother and churchmember. It continued when I got the ambulance stuck in 2 feet of snow out meadow creek road, and when I qualified for a payment plan on a computer so I could start going to college against The Will Of The Lord. It went on when I got a divorce, then a boyfriend, then another divorce, and it hasn't showed any signs of slowing down.
Anyway, if somebody could make a living out of getting in trouble I feel like I could NAIL the interview for that job. Recently I have curbed my trouble-garnishing habits to less socially irresponsible things than boyfriends and bad credit. I have learned to invest my mischievous energy into Saying All Of the Wrong Things and probably soliciting certain death at the hand of either a terrorist, a republican, or my mother (they might have to leg wrestle for the privilege).
I recently wrote a blog post about Fear, and being the attention seeker that I have ALWAYS been, I used a bunch of tags like "terror, terrorist.." etc. The next day I had 900 hits on my blog from Israel. The country. I should be more concerned, especially after the Boxcutter Incident, but knowing I have a brother who works for the NSA makes me feel reasonably safe that I would have a few mintues of warning if an attack was imminent, to make my way across the border into Canada and the polite safety of our Northern Neighbors.
As if beckoning international attention wasn't enough, with all of this political bruhaha smothering the food and beer posts right off of my Facebook feed, I might have inadvertently posted something not conservative enough, or much too conservative, which inevitably leads to a comment fight between my dad and my Most Liberal Friend, a smattering of snarky comments from an assortment of cousins, and makes me want to delete my entire online life which would spell the end of my attempt at fame. You can take your pick of gun rights, #coplivesmatter, #idiocracy ala Donald Trump, Kim Davis, Syrian Refugees or Planned Parenthood, but there's a 102% chance that I will be on the exact wrong side of the fence from everyone. Not that I mind really, because it is a maddening world.
To top it all off, my friend Beth Woolsey, of Five Kids Is A Lot Of Kids fame, generously ran one of my old blog posts about Wetting The Bed, because if you're going to be exposed to a whole new audience of readers, it might as well be about one of the most shameful experiences of your life, right? Anyway, my poor Mom, God Love Her, can't understand why bed wetting needs to be mentioned ever at all. Here I go reverting back to doing All The Wrong Things Again. I have to say that she's come a long way in that she's able to love me unconditionally through my Poor Life Choices these days (really Mom, I appreciate your tolerance for reals). Plus I imagine she doesn't want to leg wrestle an Israeli or a Republican for the privilege of attacking me. (Now I will probably be in trouble for saying I was in trouble when I wasn't really in trouble at all. Story of my life.)
I would say that I am making a resolution to quit getting into trouble so often, but we would all know how grossly shallow that promise would be. And it's not like I ever run into mischief INTENTIONALLY. Well, not usually. But for the time being I will try to keep my misbehavior limited to using my cell phone in class, liking inappropriate memes on Facebook, and eating too much cheesy bread (don't tell my challenge group).
