Good... And Good for You

a couple of weeks ago, i went to a football game with a friend and her family, including her 16 year old niece who quite obviously thinks i'm lame. which is totally fine because i am kind of lame and also she's 16, so the eye rolling and the cringing kind of just comes with the territory. i was thinking about how hard it is to be a teenage girl- how much time you spend worrying about embarrassing yourself, how HUGE the little embarrassments feel and how generally inhibited you have to become just to feel like you can survive. i really don't feel like i was ever myself with my friends until the summer after my freshman year of college because i was so terrified that they wouldn't like me.  and i was a pretty well-adjusted kid. as an adult, i have the opposite problem. i live alone and tend to go unchecked in a lot of ways and the challenge is to stay on the right side of social norms. here, i'll give you an example. halloween is coming and i freaking love hall...

the other day i was running late, as i am prone to do, and the traffic lights conspired against me despite how wildly i gesticulated at them. so after hitting, like, my 300th red light in a row, i let out an exasperated, "gaa!" and veered to turn right. only there was a guy on the corner who stepped into the intersection in front of me. so i hit him. just kidding. i hit my brakes and let out another "gaa!" which made the guy look at me like i was ridiculous. which i was. so i flashed him the peace sign because that's what i do when i'm in my car and i want people to forgive me for being ridiculous. but that just made the guy stop in front of my car and glare at me as though he thought i was doing a sarcastic peace sign. which i most definitely was not. my peace signs are always in earnest. so then i gestured at him to cross. kind of a, "no, seriously, sir. it's your right of way and i realize that. proceed." kind of a gesture. but th...

so, it turns out my grandfather did not have a secret family in germany. i know i should be happy about it, but all i can think about is how the potentially greatest chapter of my currently unwritten memoirs will now never be written. and how the title of my memoirs, "kat: nazi hunter," has lost the touch of irony that was sure to make it a best seller.

sixish+ months ago, i was watching "60 minutes" with my dad and there was a story about people who don't have the facial recognition part of their brain so they don't have the ability to recognize anybody. ever. not even their children. it was sad. they quizzed the non-recognizers by holding up pictures of famous people like martin luther king, jr. and george clooney, etc. and the poor, non-recognizers knew not a one. and neither did my dad (which made me feel slightly more forgiving towards him regarding the time i had a five minute conversation with him at the bank and it turned out he didn't know who i was (but (silver lining) he was still very nice to me)). like, seriously. he didn't know anybody. and every time they held up a picture of a black guy, he would guess jesse jackson, which was never the right answer. THEN they moved on to the people on the opposite side of the spectrum, a super recognizer, who remembers every face. it was also kind of sad...

the main reason i try not to do anything ironically is that i'm forgetful and if i do something often enough, i forget i'm doing it ironically and it becomes an actual thing. forgotten irony is the reason i say, "keepin' it real." it's why i make a pouty, fish face when i dance. and, oh gosh, it's why i dance the way i do. the running man? why am i always doing the running man?? it's the reason for the nonstop dialogue i provide for animals. i now have full-on, two-sided conversations with ziggy. it's one mother-issue away from being norman bates-ian. it's to blame for the hair feathers i wear. and my neon everything. AND my punk, 80s makeup (i'm 31!). and the fact that i've seen every episode of "dawson's creek." ...ahem... and "that's so raven." all i'm saying is that i don't wear irony well. or, i don't wear it ironically. or whatever.