Lion and Magic Boy

Today I looked inside myself and saw that all the Blog Posts for this entire lifetime have been completely used up, a whole life squeezed into seven months of posting, so I went to my other source, which is a file I made a while back enigmatically entitled “Ideas”.

First, however, I had to find the file. I know I put it inside another folder, marked, appropriately, as “Blogstuff”, but I have found that looking in the Blogstuff folder yields exactly zero results and instead shows me several JPGs I downloaded once when I was feeling semi-computer literate, that were to one day maybe become part of my blog masthead (instead, I emailed a couple of other images that I got from the little sidebar thing over at Dooce, the produce labels? and then sent them on to my friend Rebecca, who like I said before is responsible for my blog’s New Look. If you don’t like it, you can blame her Isn’t it wonderful? I really like it. Thank you, Rebecca.).

So it’s not in Blogstuff, but I have learned that performing a search of files and folders will uncover the Ideas file, and guess where it is, every time? C’mon, guess! That’s right! (dingdingdingding) In the Blogstuff folder! (Have I mentioned how I feel about Bill Gates? Yes, I have.)

The Ideas file actually has about eight words/phrases in it, in no particular order, all very cryptic and practically undecipherable.
I did remember what one was about, however: “Interviews”.

I have been interviewed by a journalist exactly twice.

The first time was in the 3rd grade. (Oh, it does so count! Fine, don’t read then.)

I was interviewed by the school newspaper, along with my mother who happened to be a teacher at the same school. Not only was it news to me that the school even had a newspaper, but it also became clear through this special treatment that people viewed the fact that a mother AND a daughter being AT THE SAME SCHOOL was a bit of an oddity. What strikes me now as strange is that they failed to interview my brother, who also attended that school that year, in the 5th grade. Did he refuse? Did he fade so completely into the wallpaper that no one knew of his existence?

(that was always one of my fears — where’s Karen? I don’t know, she was here a minute ago. BUMP! What’s that lumpy thing there that blends so completely in with the textured plastic wallpaper that just wipes clean of all the thousands of grubby third-grade fingerprints? OHMYGOD, it’s Karen! How’d you get there? I never saw you! You just blended completely in with the wallpaper!)

At last the day came, and two older kids, maybe sixth graders, the girl probably wearing purple eyeshadow and frosted pink lipstick and those crinkly white go-go boots beneath her miniskirt, the boy with longish hair he kept flipping out of his eyes and an avocado-green button-down shirt buttoned all the way up to the neck, met us in my mom’s classroom at lunchtime. The questions went something like this:

Interviewer Boy: Mrs. Murray, what is it like having your daughter Karen at the school where you teach?

Mom: It’s very nice.

Interviewer Girl: Karen, what is it like having your mother Mrs. Murray be a teacher at the school where you’re in 3rd grade?

Me: It’s very nice.

Interviewers, together: That’s all our questions, thank you.

The second interview came from a Real Journalist, from an Actual Newspaper. I was about 30, working as a property manager near Pittsburgh. Some incident that I have now forgotten occurred at one of my buildings, a high-rise low-income building for the elderly, and a journalist called me to speak about it.

Although what I spoke was completely the truth about the incident (was it a fire? lady getting knocked down by evil elevator doors and suing the building? parking lot repairs being delayed so that the twelve residents who still drove had to park on the street and complained about it?), my words were taken out of context so that the meaning was twisted, and I got a Severe Talking-To from the Boss’s Son, but I think all the bosses were secretly relieved it wasn’t them that got the call because the same thing would have happened to them, and then who could they blame for making the company look bad?

Bleh.