This post isn’t fully cooked so it may get edited later.

Ever read the Hedy Lamarr quote that says ‘Any girl can be glamorous, all you have to do is stand still and look stupid’?

Even though I LOVE dressing up, and I don’t actually think that glamorous people ARE stupid at all, I do think there’s a lot of truth in her statement. When we think of glamorous people we don’t think of someone whose expression is burning with intelligence, we generally think of someone who is a bit of a blank slate so we can project something on to them – our own aspirations, our admiration, or whatever we can imagine. That projection is way easier on us if we don’t have to bother with thinking of them as having their own thoughts or ideas, if we don’t have to imagine them as having agency.

That’s why it has always made sense to me that the ‘glamour’ spells in my urban fantasy books depended on the imagination of the viewer. Witches and sorcerers in those books are able to use glamour spells to disguise themselves as someone else and it works as long as the viewer is EXPECTING to see the other person. If the viewer’s subconscious doesn’t play along then the spell is useless.

It seems to me that glamour in real life can work much the same way. If the viewers aren’t interrupted by reality (a glamorous person’s real ideas or opinions), it is a lot easier to project our ideas onto the person and see them the way that we want to see them – beautiful, perfect, flawless. If they were to become ‘real’ to us, instead of just glamorous, then we might see some flaws, we might find things to disagree with. We might break the ‘glamour’ spell and see reality.

It kind of makes me wonder what other things we are projecting on to other people all the time without realizing it? Are there other ‘spells’ that we are vulnerable to because of what we are expecting to see or expecting to happen?

That is mostly a rhetorical question – I know there are. How often have you been part of an argument that started because your expectations coloured how you heard the other person’s response? Or because their expectations caused them to hear you as opposing them when you actually felt quite neutral?

I don’t have a solution for any of this except to try and be conscious of it. To recognize that my impressions of things are just that – impressions – and they may have no grounding in reality at all. It’s worth taking a second look, or giving something a second thought, just to make sure that I haven’t been blinded by a glamour of some sort. I want to make sure that I am seeing something close to reality, that I am giving people a fair chance.
PS – I just want to reiterate that I have NO problem with people wanting to dress fancy, to spend time dolling themselves up. That’s not what this post is about. If it brings you joy or lets you have more fun then break out the hair gel and the lipstick and have at it.

A few years ago, I had a bunch of kids over to film a pirate battle in my backyard* and we had a marvellous time. Afterwards, one of the other Moms asked me one of the most startling questions I’ve ever heard…

“So, do you just spend all your time thinking up fun things to do?”

She didn’t mean it as an insult or a dismissal, she was just interested, but I found it kind of strange because what the hell else do you do with your life except think up fun things to do?

I’m not a 18th Century Puritan, I don’t think this life is all about finding your duty and fulfilling it. I think that life is short and you need to find all the fun you can, wherever you can.

I don’t mean that you shold shirk your work or your responsibilities, there’s lots of time and space for both. I know that there are a lot of challenges to face in any life, and some have more challenges than others, I’m not being dismissive of people’s difficulties, but I do firmly believe that thinking of fun things to do makes life better, even if those fun things are small and packed in between less fun things. And the best approach might be to do what I advise my boys to do every day ‘Find one fun thing about each class today, even if it is just that you really like the colour of the classroom door.’

For me, the ultimate in fun is in foolishness, in wordplay and in joking. That’s why I send a goofy note to my sons (one on paper, one via text) every school day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s why I find weird ways to interpret ordinary things, why I ask little kids silly questions (Were the llamas on the bus well behaved today?) and why I like to play board games or turn daily situations into songs. (When my kids were small, I used to make them laugh by singing ‘The boy-dressing robot is trying to do her job, the boy dressing robot is calling you all Bob! Hey Bob, come here so I can get you dressed!’)

My whole family is this way – both the family I was born into and the family I created – we’re finding ways to make things more fun. We’re looking for ways to laugh.** We’re seeking ways to see the world from a slightly different angle. We are open to the possibility that there is more fun to be had than we can currently see and we are determined to wring out every laugh that we can get.

That’s not to say that we are laughing at every hardship or that we don’t know when to be serious. We’re pretty good at serious. But if there is a way to lighten the load by being a little goofy we want in.

I just think that there is not much point if you can’t find joy whenever possible. Why are we here if it isn’t to enjoy ourselves? It’s not like we are creatures who can’t do anything else but eat and sleep and procreate. We have senses of humour so I think it is up to us to make full use of them. Anything else would be a crime.

So, yeah, I do just spend time thinking up fun things to do, but the good news is that I am willing to drag you along with me while I make them up, as long as you want to go. In fact, I’m in the middle of designing an online course about how to find more fun in the life you already have.

I hope you had at least a little fun today. If not, there’s still time!

How do you keep fun in your life? Do you have long running foolishness in your family too?

 

*You know, as one does.

**When I was a teenager, my dad told us this joke : ‘There was a man walking down the road with a pig under his arm. He came across this woman who screwed up her face and said ‘Where did you get that ugly-looking thing?’ and the pig said ‘I won him at a raffle!’

We can still crack each other up just by saying ‘I won him at a raffle!’ for no reason at all. We may need to get out more. 😉

Important question here:

 

This is my latest post for the Blogging from A-Z Challenge. I’ve been through about 6 different ideas for E today and none of them got me to actually put my fingers to the keyboard so I outsourced my choice and asked my kids. TLG (10)’s suggestion of Elephant won out over TB (13)’s suggestion of Echidna, mostly because I had never heard of an Echidna before today. I did have an amusing few minutes trying to convince TB that I thought he had made up Echidna as an elaborate practical joke though, so there’s that.

I rode an elephant once when I was a kid but if you think this is going to be a huge turning-point-in-my-life story, you’d be wrong. I can remember that the line was long and the elephant was big and that it was uncomfortable to sit on the elephant’s back, but I don’t remember being in awe or finding it weird or anything. You’d think that a young kid who lived on an island in Canada would be at least a little impressed to find herself on an elephant’s back, but apparently not. I’m not known as someone who takes things in stride but the full story is that I take a fair number of bizarre things in stride and then I will be brought up solid by some small thing that a thousand other people will let slide right by them. So perhaps it is not that I *don’t* take things in stride, perhaps it is that I take different things in stride than the people who have given me crap about it.

Speaking of crap, I went to an indoor circus when I was small (oddly enough, this circus took place at the Arts and Culture Centre) and the acts were terrible. According to my parents, the only thing that us kids got excited about was when an elephant pooped on the stage and a guy had to bring out a bucket to clean it up. Kids always appreciate a good poop joke, even if it means someone has to get a bucket.

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I have a fair amount of elephant jewelry, I think it started when my brother-in-law brought me a bracelet from his travels ages and ages ago, and that bracelet somehow sent out a signal to the universe that I love elephants. I do like elephants, as a matter of fact, and I have even bought myself some elephant jewelry in the last few years, but I don’t remember having a particular affection for them before that first bracelet.

I feel a bit guilty when I look at them now, though, after seeing them in a zoo last year.

I’m on the fence about zoos, they are interesting and the animals are beautiful, and they certainly give you an appreciate for the majesty of nature, but there’s something really creepy about them, too. It feels wrong to have these animals in fake habitats, exhibiting (fairly) fake behaviour so we can stand around and gawk at them. It feels like the order of things has gotten mixed up. We should be afraid, or at least in awe, of most of these animals instead of pointing them out to our kids. They’re beautiful but somehow wrong, as if the very thing that makes them magnificent is the exact thing we are trying to breed out of them.

I felt it most strongly when I looked at the elephants. They were on the far side of the enclosure, all standing together. They looked exactly like a bunch of teenagers who had been having a good time until someone’s Mom showed up. I swear, if they could have chewed gum or lit a cigarette to show that they didn’t give a damn about what we thought, they would have.*

There was something especially gross about having the elephants in a zoo. They were too big for us to have them at our command, in a space we had made for them. It seemed like they should want to smash everything and escape. I was in awe, completely disconcerted, and somehow proud of them for staying on the other side of the enclosure all the hell away from us humans.

You could ask, of course, what the heck I was doing in a zoo if I don’t quite agree with their existence. The answer is, of course, that I don’t actually know. My kids were interested in seeing the animals, and I was curious as well, and since my not going wasn’t going to make a bit of difference to the animals nor to the zoo, I decided not to make a stand on that issue right then. Perhaps it was a kind of ‘choose your battles’ situation, or maybe it was just laziness and a desire to go with the flow for once, but I went to the zoo. I found it beautiful and weird and delightful and unpleasant. I may never go again.

I like elephants but I definitely prefer to think of them thundering around in the wild than hanging out in the corner of a zoo enclosure. I also enjoy having them hanging out on my earrings, bracelets, or necklaces, there’s less conflict. I don’t have to worry about their feelings, their captivity, or their poop** when they are silver and sparkly.

Of course, there’s an argument to be made that enjoying them on jewelry is only liking them for how they look, but heavens, I can only unpack ***so many layers about elephants.
* I am having this little twinge of memory that I’ve read somewhere that elephants don’t lie down when they are in captivity and this grouping is not a casual thing, it is a protective thing. So, I’m giving you my anthropomorphic impression here, not a considered biological opinion. Apply as needed.

**Did you ever try any of that elephant poop paper? Isn’t that the most bizarre thing? Where do people get their business ideas at all?
*** Unpack. Like a suitcase. Or like a trunk! Ha!

I am strongly pro-costume.

I know that a lot of people consider dressing up for Hallowe’en or for a costume party to be waaaaay too much trouble and I respect that, but it is a perspective I don’t share. I love to find a reason to wear something fun and I will go well out of my way to put a costume together.

I like to attend the Sci-Fi on the Rock convention here in NL and the primary reason is so I can dress up as one of the kick-ass characters on a favourite TV show or movie*. On Hallowe’en, even if I don’t go to a party, I dress up to pick my kids up from school or just to answer the door. I just like adding that layer to my life at any time.

The idea of costumes is so much a part of the narrative of my family’s lives that a couple of years ago when my kids woke up one morning and realized they were supposed to dress as a favourite character from a book, we were able to put together two outfits in less than 10 minutes. My older son went as DentArthurDent from the Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy (an easy one – a stripey towel and fake book cover that said ‘Don’t Panic’) and my youngest son went as Draco Malfoy (a cape-like jacket that we have kicking around that my Aunt owned, my Mom wore when she was pregnant with my sister (in 1981), I wore in university, and we have used as a pirate’s cloak, a vampire cape, a plague doctor’s coat, and Malfoy’s robes, combined with a Slitheryn scarf and slicked-back hair). It was as natural to help them put together a costume as it was to find them regular clothes for school.

I had some extra insight into my love of costumes and dressing up, when I was getting ready for my friend’s birthday party last June. For the past couple of years, my friend D (good coincidence, no?) has had a themed party. The first one was an R & B party** and last year was a New Wave theme. As I was putting on heavy make-up and teasing my hair to become Siouxsie Sue, I realized how much I miss ‘getting ready.’

When I was a teenager, going out was a big deal. You ‘had’ to spend time planning your outfit, doing your hair and getting your make-up just so. You called other people to see what they were planning to wear. Even family events like birthday parties and holiday get-togethers required you to dress up a bit. It felt like an important ritual (I am also very pro-ritual – I contend that our minds are, too) and it added pleasure to going somewhere. It created more anticipation, made it more special.

(I’m sure I could write a whole other entry about how we were putting on ‘masks’, creating a public persona, and how that is an awful lot like wearing a costume. That’s all true but that’s not where I’m going with this post.)

Going out is not the same for most of us these days. Sure, we sometimes get dressed up but mostly it is ‘come as you are.’  A lot of that has to do with hair/make-up styles being less complex in this era than they were in the 80s and 90s when I was in my teens/early 20s and some of it has to do things being more casual overall (and my teens and 20s were way more casual than in previous generations, I realize that). I think, though, that another part of it has to do with the idea that we’re all ‘so busy’ that we can’t be bothered with the rituals of going out.

There’s a whole cultural thing going on with ‘busy’ and I’m not getting into that either, but I try to catch myself when I say something about being ‘busy’ and talk instead about the choices I am making with my time.*** And one of my choices since my realization about ‘going out’ rituals is to take some time to get ready before I go anywhere that’s important to me. I may not put make-up on, I may not put on ‘fancy’ clothes or a costume, but I do take a little time to think about where I am going and how I want to prepare to spend time there. It feels good.

And, for the record, for this year’s Sci-Fi on the Rock Convention, I’m going as Melinda May from Agents of Shield. It’s a simple costume, but I’ll be taking plenty of time to get ready. I don’t want to miss any of the fun of dressing up.

*Now, I don’t mean that I have the time, ability, or wealth to put together the sort of elaborate cosplay you see at big conventions or that sort of thing. That’s way beyond my skill set and would take the fun out of it for me. I generally go for the spirit of the character rather than the details.

** to give you some idea of my costume approach – I bought some purple velvet-y fabric, lay down on it and had my husband draw around me with tailor’s chalk. I cut it out, sewed it up, made a few adjustments and called it a dress.

***This is a happy outcome of taking the ‘Foundations‘ course from Cairene McDonald. It was absolutely life changing. Read this post for a taste of her brilliance.