One admonition I can’t seem to scrub from my brain is my mother’s bit about wearing the right underwear in case I’m in a car accident. Maybe your mother used the word, “clean,” when giving underwear life lessons, but no, mine specified, “right.” Her reasoning was if I had on a pair of lacy deals or something even more scandalous, the attending physician in the ER might think I’m loose.
Yeah. That’s going to be a flash of thought for me, I suppose, when the doc is trying to volt me with paddles, and tweezing shards of glass from my forehead. “Whoa, this chick might not live through the night, but oh well. She’s got on frilly underwear, and you know what that makes her.”
Whenever I hear naysayer anthems in any walk of life, I have this strange tendency to contemplate the difference between the undies my mom wishes I’d wear, and the undies I do wear. (Yes, sorry, my brain works that way.)
One naysayer anthem I’ve heard relates directly to my newest gig in becoming a published author, and venturing into the land of woe and book sales.
What’s said: “Don’t expect much, because you won’t get much.”
What I hear: “Wear your granny panties.”
Well, you know what? I don’t want to wear my granny panties. And you know what else? I don’t care what I should expect. And I don’t care if an ER doctor thinks I’m loose, and I don’t care if people think I’m chasing unrealistic dreams.
(OK, I actually do care if an ER doctor thinks I’m loose, so don’t quote me on that. I got lost in the moment.)
One thing I do care about is what moves me. I need a juicy little nugget of hope, dangling just out of my hungry grasp. Yes, I know the odds are not in my favor of being a best-selling author. Yet, I still tell myself it’s a matter of when, not if, because anything short of that . . . well, if I didn’t have that particular hope to chase each day, then I’d be lying on the floor pressing a Life Alert button just to see if anyone comes.
I might have failure after failure, never even getting as far as putting one tiny finger on the first stair to success, but I’m sorry, I won’t stop striving and dreaming for more until I’m dead.
(Oh, and when it is my time to go, I hope whether or not the doctor resuscitates me isn’t predicated on my underwear choice.)
