I know I often sink into that treacly Pollyanna-glad-glad-glad and I realize that, for some, the cloying sweetness is somewhat gagging. My apologies if I make you urp. Trouble is that the little compartment in my being labelled "Gratitude" has somehow grown disporportionately into a giant size walk-in closet........I somehow cannot help being grateful for all the blessings that fall around, over, under and inbetween the inevitable ghastly periods. Consequently I seem to write an awful lot about stuff I'm grateful for...if my attitude offends, I am sorry.....I don't mean to suggest that you have to be grateful too.....(only that I think you oughta.) Anyway, here is my latest bow of gratitude.
Attention All Bloggers : Do you Know that You are the Luckiest people in the World ?
I just finished gorging on todays offerings of the blogs on my reading list and I realized that we bloggers are indeed the luckiest people maybe in the universe. Not only are bloggers the smartest people, the most evolved, the cleverest and the most interesting, but we have the most incredible social opportunity ever offered to mankind. Stop that hissing and booing......Hear me out, please.
I have always detested parties....especially cocktail parties and have resisted attending them for most of my life. Why would I want to go to an event where I have to stand up clutching a watery drink, balancing uncomfortably on stilletto heels, trying to look anything but disgusted and horrified at the mostly idiotic interactions going on around me? Why would I subject myself to the pain of trying to hold a conversation with someone who walks off in the middle of my sentence in order to "talk" to someone else who looks more interesting? And, why endure the agony of having to listen to the inane, pointless babbling of a half drunk or, worse yet, mentally challenged sober person and struggle to try to figure out some appropriate response out of deference to my host or hostess who thought they were doing me a favor by inviting me?
Why indeed any of the above and, consequently, I strove (is that a real word?) never to do so and, as you guessed, I got labelled as a sourpuss, an anti-social oddball, the world's worst party pooper and ceased to be invited to just about everything. And that was fine with me. Except that once in a while I would get a bit wistful over the fact that, like Shirley Valentine in that fantastic movie of the same name, (does anyone remember it beside me?) I found myself talking to rocks in order to not forget the art of conversation.
However, now all that is changed. I now choose to live in the Blog World for an hour or two daily....a parallel universe which is infinitely superior in many ways to what the uninitiated call the Real World. Now, at any moment of the day or nite, on any day of the week, daytime, nightime, rain, hail or moonshine I can attend a whole string of wonderful parties at the click of a Mouse. I can now bounce effortlessly around the cyber world and participate, on any given afternoon, in a hundred fascinating, witty, profound and/or thought-provoking chats and interchanges with fellow bloggers and their followers from all over the world.
Or not. That is not participate but still savor and enjoy.
Yes, I do not even have to exert myself one little smidgeon. And, far from wearing agonizingly painful stilletto heels I can go in my tatty ratty bathrobe or even straight from the shower clad in nothing at all but my bunny slippers. I am allowed to wander through and eavesdrop on all that is going on, sample all the delicious canapes, nosh to my heart's and tummy's content on the marvelous spread on the buffet and not contribute a damned thing if I am not inspired or inclined to do so. It is a free feast almost too vast and delicious to be borne. And if I DO want to join in, all I need do is Comment...... and practically anyone who is at this particular party will attend to my remarks, but most particularly, the host who, like all bloggers, adores comments, will pay attention and definitely not wander off in mid sentence.. It is called Browsing the Blogs and there is nothing like it in the whole friggin' world.
I am awestruck by this amazing fringe benefit of Blogging.......so much so that I invite all my readers to let me know whether this same idea has occurred to them, being that most everyone is a more seasoned blogger than me. I am not trying to take credit for this idea...just to share it in case no one has expressed it before me.
Please, do let me know. And thank you for your participation, (you lucky dogs, you).
The New Yorker covers: September 26, 2011
2 hours ago
