I have a special book. It’s pink of course. It holds every important thing about me in it. For example, my tax file number, my bank account passwords and numbers, BSBs, Medicare details, my children’s passport numbers, my driver’s licence number, how many men I’ve slept with, jokes… but it has bloody everything in it.
If I ever lost this book I’d be up the creek without a pair of floaties with a hungry crocodile stalking me with his teeth gleaming and me screaming like a banshee scrabbling towards the slimy banks.
It lives in my bedside drawer (just in case you’re a burglar) and it’s always making the drawer jam in an extremely frustrating manner because it’s full of receipts and random scrunched up pieces of paper. I have to squeeze my fingers through the tiny slit when I open the drawer and force it down so I can open the drawer at all.
It lives in my bedside drawer (just in case you’re a burglar) and it’s always making the drawer jam in an extremely frustrating manner because it’s full of receipts and random scrunched up pieces of paper. I have to squeeze my fingers through the tiny slit when I open the drawer and force it down so I can open the drawer at all.
I suppose I could put it in the empty drawer underneath but that’s never occurred to me until this very moment. Excuse me while I move my special book into the drawer below from where it usually lives. Aahh, that’s better.
The page in this picture displays the score sheet from when I used to compete with Scotto in Jeopardy games.
The page in this picture displays the score sheet from when I used to compete with Scotto in Jeopardy games.
The words on the right were the’ Final Jeopardy’ questions which I made Scotto and I write down to prove who had it right (so he couldn’t cheat).
This page is from when I was a bit tipsy one night and thought I could write the lyrics to a number #1 pop song.
This little notebook has been around for at least thirteen years. Very old school, don’t you think?
It just goes to show that some things never die. It also goes to show how tipsy middle-aged women think they can do anything... like write the lyrics to a pop song.
I think the biggest problem in my life has been that I think I can achieve anything I want to do. You know how people bleat on all the time about ‘believing in yourself’ and how ‘you can be the thing you think you can be’? I had that drummed into me from since I was three years old when I inadvertently amazed my parents by reciting ‘Vespers’ by A.A.Milne into a tape recorder. Since then, they’ve believed I have some sort of underlying genius talent waiting to be unleashed and I’ve always believed that too because of their encouragement. It’s like the opposite of what most people say. I have way too much inner confidence which is why I’m always really, genuinely surprised when I fail, over and over.
It feels strange for a frghty- flivft year old woman to be talking about the influence of her parents on her self-esteem but that’s pretty much how long a parent’s influence lasts.,, until death really.
So be careful what you say to your kids because it sticks like Araldite and not like cheaper varieties of glue you can get and which failed to fix our bedroom door knob.
I’m grateful to my parents for making me think I was far more gifted, intelligent, or special than I actually am. I hope I did the same for my kids. You don’t want them to feel they’re better than anyone else… just sure of their own place in the world and always ready to leap for the next silver-lined passing cloud.
Did your parents encourage you?
Linking up with Jess from Essentially Jess for #IBOT
Linking up with Jess from Essentially Jess for #IBOT
