The Unwritten Vignette

I remember the days when everything was an affront, if only in the most ironic ways. Every situation called for sarcasm and cynicism. (Optimism is much less entertaining.)

There's something to be said for the Queen of Sardonic Smirks - she's the Queen! And yet I do not find it in me to be truly jealous. She may be the Queen, but Sardonic Smirks do not compose a fairy tale kingdom. (But then again, her appeal always was in tossing the fairy tale on its wings.)

I was an obnoxious seven year old, an obnoxious fourteen year old, and no doubt obnoxious now, too. And I got (get) away with it because I am precocious. But most people don't give a shit about precocious, 'cause that has leopard spots to do with people. However, people are into quirky. Obnoxious and quirky even complement each other (they add up to 180). But you gotta smile a lot to be quirky, so I guess I'd better start smilin' more.

Half the point is that even if I leave everything out for anyone and their bag of chips to see, there will still be a few galaxies of information that they'll never even glimpse. The people we think we know are underestimates. (Non-existent devil abode, we're underestimates. Almost no one is everything they could be.)

If there's one thing I miss from those days, it's the sass. I'm so serious now - all my irony is so subtle that it's liable to be overlooked. (My sarcasm is nearly as invisible as I used to be.) That Queen of Sardonic Smirks certainly knew how to turn a phrase past 360. (And the straight-up Southern Darling doesn't? That's a jarring jack-of-the-box of an idea.)

I'm going to continue to feed the starving orphans in Africa. What I write isn't "deep" - it's basic soap-style melodrama. Who gives a sopping towel about some guy I looked at from across the room or whether or not I think I'm lonely? I complain in glittering trash about how much non-meaning words have (such a shame that there's more trash than glitter). I should take my own advice and talk less than I walk.

So, it's oh-dark-thirty in the morning (2:26) and I'm lying in bed, monstrous blue headphones swallowing my chin, hunting and pecking at my iPod screen. And it's no novelty of a scene. Writing (hunting and pecking) means shadows that could be mistaken for messed up eye makeup. ("Where'd you find that shade of purple?")

Tomorrow I'll roll out of bed with a groan (possibly of the explicit variety) and slap that sadistic screaming clock into submission. For all of approximately nine minutes, at which point I may actually leave my room. Maybe. If I don't burrow back beneath my covers for warmth so I don't have to begin my day of relearning how to smile just right. (Although I abdicated the throne of Sardonic Smirks, I have yet to complete my immigration to the Smiling Society.)

And I'll still remember the days when everything used to be an affront, and I'll have to pretend that there aren't some things about those horrible, awful, obnoxious, precocious days that I miss. (Shhh.... This vignette was never written.)