The path through lameness

Lameness is like everything else, except a lake or solid object:  You can't go around it.  You can only go through it. 

In my experience, it helps to find one -- very patient -- person and tell them your lame idea 100 times.  (Or you could find 100 people, and tell each one your dumb idea one time.  Or, I suppose, 50 people who -- well, you can do the math.)

For this idea to have legs, it needs several convincing parts.  The musically-minded may imagine a symphony of lameness, beginning with a few inauspicious notes and slowly building to a magnificent crescendo. 

For me, the opening bars were mild expressions of ennui. 

Next would be a wistful remark along the lines of: "I wish I had the time to . . . "  Or: "I remember when I used to . . . "

Warming to my theme, I would venture that, sadly, such a thing was impossible.

It would never work.

Why?

Suddenly ablaze with conviction, I would point out the obvious in a know-it-all tone:

Because single working mothers just don't bang out creative projects on the side.  It simply doesn't happen!  We are like desert lizards: built to survive harsh conditions, without waste.  By 9 p.m., all we can do is rip open a bag of Skinny Pop and escape into Sherlock.  Nor can we wake up before dawn, because we need our beauty sleep.  (This sounds better than "sanity sleep.")  Get real!

No one can name one person who has achieved what you -- in your accusatory silence -- challenge me to do (also silently, as you are saying nothing):

TV actress Isabel Gillies wrote a gritty, funny, inspiring book about how her husband left her for another woman when her two sons were toddlers.  She had a rough patch as a single mother, but by the time she actually wrote the book, she was remarried to a boyish reporter for the Wall Street Journal.

J.K. Rowling famously wrote the first Harry Potter novel in a café while her infant daughter slept, jobless after a failed marriage.   It is not clear to me how she supported herself, probably by going "on the dole."

These examples are not, as we say in the law, analogous to the instant facts.  So what's your point?

Occasionally you pose questions such as:

- Aren't the kids with their dad sometimes?

- Is there some way I can help you?, and

- Ok.  Can we watch the movie now?

All of these serve to indicate you just don't "get it."  Because we will have this tiresome conversation, in which you fail to appreciate my plight, many more times, I will rewind and put this tape away for later.  Never mind!

* * * *

As in a fairy tale, this has to recur a magical number of times.  (Three?  No: One hundred.)

On the 101st time, you listen to yourself.  And are like:  Dude.  Seriously?

Just like that, you are through.

(And now, off to Safari West.  Spring Break!)