True Confessions

/ Diane Henders

I just finished confessing to a complete lack of literary sophistication over on my blogging buddy Carrie Rubin’s latest post, and it got me thinking (always a dangerous thing).

And the more I thought about it, the more I realized I lack taste in most areas.

I hide it well enough in public most of the time. During my lengthy and painful sojourn as an interior designer I managed to build a veneer of deceptive behaviours that masqueraded as good manners and (somewhat) refined taste:

  • About once a year I went to a nice mid-range clothing store and bought a few things in whatever colour/cut/style was purported to be ‘in fashion’ for the season so I could blend into the professional community.
  • I suppressed coughs, sneezes, burps, farts, and every hint of my dirty mind and twisted sense of humour.
  • I feigned fascination and deep concern over furniture and paint colours and carpets that were fundamentally the same and would be indistinguishable from the alternate choices within minutes of being installed.

While I was a computer geek the rules of taste were mercifully relaxed, but in my next incarnation as a business owner I forced myself to attend networking events and dinners and seminars in the hope of convincing other business owners that I was sufficiently socially aware not to be an embarrassment while providing them with computer training.

  • I sat through presentations on everything from team building to angel channeling to economics to unleashing the power of my femininity: straight-faced, asking pertinent questions, and nodding seriously at the replies.
  • I suppressed my natural urge to pig out at dinners and ate politely, nay, dare I say daintily.
  • I never, not even once, stood up and shouted, “All in favour of throwing on some jeans and pounding back some beers, follow me!”

Fortunately I’ve always had good friends who know the real me and therefore find my fakery hilarious, or my brain probably would have exploded.

These days I hire others far more qualified than I to interact with the normal human race (thank you, David and Sharon, for being the public faces of my computer training business), and I lurk happily in my sordid home-office lair, wearing comfortable clothes and writing things that make me laugh.

It’s far too late to impress anybody now. So, inspired by Carrie’s honesty, I hereby confess:

  • I hated the literary classics. All of them.
  • I cheerfully wear the same T-shirts, fleece jacket,  yoga pants, jeans, and sneakers week after month after year without ever desiring any newer or more fashionable clothes.  In my defense, I do wash them after each wearing.  I may not have fashion sense but at least I’m clean.
  • I enjoy poetry, but my true love is limericks.
  • Farts make me snicker.
  • I love fine food and wine, but I love burgers and beer just as much.
  • My liking for classical music might make me look as though I have taste, but the truth is I like rock and pop just as well. And blues and country and metal and reggae and ragtime and big band and just about everything else including polkas and accordion music. Sad but true.
  • I’ll choose a stupid sitcom over a serious drama every time. (Does anybody remember WKRP in Cincinnati? “…As God is my witness, Travis, I thought turkeys could fly.”)
  • In private, I lick my fingers instead of using a napkin.  Sometimes I lick the plate, too.  Especially if there’s rare-steak juice.

How about you?

  • Dress-up or jeans?
  • Haute cuisine or pub grub?
  • Comedy, drama, action, horror, sci-fi, fantasy, or romance?
  • Classics or genre fiction?
  • Shakespeare or e e cummings or doggerel?
  • Adolescent humour or… wait, never mind. If you’ve stuck with me this far, there’s no hope for you.  (Sorry about that.)

33 thoughts on “True Confessions”

  1. Pingback: Beating The Bean Breeze | Diane Henders

  2. Computer geeks don’t typically have a good fashion sense. Heck, I’m not a computer geek and I don’t. I pretty much pick up and wear what will work for that day. Not even thinking about fashion. I think I’m kinda over it.

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  3. I had a teacher tell me one time that I was such a contradiction in everything that made sense! I told my mother that and she just looked my way and said “well, she’s right, don’t worry about it”. So, I didn’t. I seem to love most every thing and at the same time I hate a lot of stuff too. OMG, I think I think like Carlin! LOL Some classical music I like but couldn’t tell you what they are. If it lays on my ears well then I like it. Goes for any kind.
    The classics? Oh puleeze. So much of it was “required reading” while in school, the junior grades at that, and like most teens I hated it. Most of us weren’t old enough to “get it”. I understand them now, but still not crazy about them. Clothing, now that’s good. When younger I’d love to dress “to the 9’s” and mingle with the sharp and shiny bunches. Then I’d wind up sitting in the kitchen with my heels off and laughing with the cooks and servers! Now, a pair of baggy jeans, a long shirt, sandals year round and comfy socks instead of slippers and I’m good. Spent all my adult working life having to dress for work and to please other people. Now, fugetaboutit.
    I like what I like. One of the corny old sayings that I like is the one that tells you to “dance like no one is watching”. My sister, God rest her soul, used to tell me that some people talk to trees, while I listened to them! Papa said that we should listen to the trees and they would tell us everything we needed to know. He was a wise man.

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    • I like your Papa’s wisdom. Imagine how the world would change if everybody took a minute or two each day to listen to the trees.

      And I think you hit the nail on the head with the classics: At the time they were introduced in school none of us had enough life experience to “get” them. Now that I do, I’d rather read escapist fun because I get enough real life in real life. 😉

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      • Oh you are so right about the “escapist” stuff. Same with me with movies. I watch a movie to be “entertained”, to be able to escape the every day crap. I don’t want a movie with hidden meanings, a strong moral message, or leaves me with having to think……at all. I want to come out laughing my butt off, maybe even just a snicker or two, but I want to be entertained! My reading is the same way. That’s why I enjoy your books so much, I can escape in them, get lost in the adventure that is not MY life, (sigh). I get enough doom and gloom every day just looking at the news and the general atmosphere! Like the old Calgon commercial used to say “Take me Away”. Yep, I pick up a “Spy” book and smile and say, “Take me Away Diane!” LOLOL! It works too.

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  4. “I realized I lack taste in most areas” – as long as some areas taste good, you should be fine. Sorry, it is just how my mind works.
    As to the list, jeans and junk food, all and every kind of music except heavy metal type stuff, don’t watch TV, like westerns and war movies, read history, and LeCarre.

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  7. Loved WKRC in Cincinnati! Especially the “Turkey” episode. Hubby & I laughed til we had tears streaming.
    Do you remember the episode where Mr. Carlson put “foot powder” on his feet as Johnny Fever went into his office?
    Another favorite moment.

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  9. Dress-up or jeans? 99% of the time, baggy jeans.
    Haute cuisine or pub grub? Doesn’t matter, as long as it’s vegan. 🙂
    Comedy, drama, action, horror, sci-fi, fantasy, or romance? Everything BUT romance.
    Classics or genre fiction? Both, depending on your definition of “classics.”
    Shakespeare or e e cummings or doggerel? e e cummings, because he made his own (non)rules.
    Adolescent humour or… wait, never mind. I LOVE me some Three Stooges! XD

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  10. I’m so with you on these, and luckily I’ve reached an age where I’m okay with admitting my unsophistication. I’ll skip the classics, the wine, the haute cuisine and take a thriller, a beer, and a pizza (though I limit the latter because of, you know, that health thing…) And I’ll be in jeans while I read, sip, and eat. 🙂

    Thanks for the mention! Much appreciated!

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  11. 1. Jeans and plaid is my favorite color for shirts.
    2. Both. I love food!
    3. Three Stooges, Humphrey Bogart, Schwarzenegger,Star Trek, Princess Bride.
    4. Historic fiction and Scandinavian murder mysteries.
    5. Doggerel and limericks.
    6. All kinds of humor.
    Yes, I am hopeless and proud of it!

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    • I’m firmly with you in the “both” category for food! And I must check out some Scandinavian murder mysteries – does “The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared” qualify? I loved that one! I liked Jonasson’s next one, “The Girl Who Saved The King Of Sweden”, but it lacked the sheer delightful wackiness of “Hundred-Year-Old Man”.

      “Hopeless And Proud Of It” – we need T-shirts! 🙂

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  12. Confessions? Well, statutes of limitations notwithstanding, here goes.

    Clothing? I’m a cargo shorts and pocket t-shirt guy. Would rather wear slacks than jeans. To me, they’re just more comfortable. I’m a ‘comfort, not looks’ kinda guy.

    Food? Meat and potatoes. I am, after all, a guy. Killer steaks and chops? We’ve had that conversation. I’m your guy. Pizza. Fresh, uncooked veggies like cauliflower and broccoli and spinach do it for me, too. Cook any of those, however, and I’m outta here. CanNOT stand the smells. Haute cuisine? ‘Way oversold. I like tasty and well prepared.

    Literature? Mostly words in a line. P.G. Wodehouse to Dumas (Dumbass or doo-MAW, whatever). I’ve read some good romances, good mysteries, good sci-fi, good non-fiction, and I’ve read some pretty bad all of the above and everything else. By and large, I prefer ‘good’ over ‘bad,’ but I’ll read either, And I love anything written by hot redheads, of course. (No pressure, but you’re lagging behind on Book 9. Get a move on. Thtill thtuck on thixty-three perthent. That jutht thucth.)

    TV? Mostly stuff from the old movie channels. I don’t do news, sitcoms, soaps, or most serialized dramas. No NCIS, or any of that stuff. I’ll watch the last season of Justified that’s coming up, but regardless of what happens there, they’ve said all there is to say already. And reality? Seriously? In what would does any of that dreadful slop pass for reality?

    Wine? Most of what I’ve tasted needs more olive oil. Really, don’t waste good wine on me. I don’t have the palate to appreciate it, and I won’t spend the money to acquire it. Same with beer. Coors (not lite) and Shiner Bock. Or whatever you’re buying.

    Movies? Less and less interested as time goes by. And whatever I watch is at the drive in. Cheap admission and reasonably priced concessions.

    Now, aren’t you sorry you asked? 🙂

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  13. Diane I think as we ‘mature’ we finally get to the point where we are comfortable with being ourselves. Yes occasions call for certain behavior and dress but like you I am very rarely out to impress, just to enjoy life.Typing with my fleece jacket on…just saying. 🙂

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