The "About Me" Section

Some nights are just "On" kind of nights--like when everything that comes out of my mouth is witty and fabulous. My comebacks are strong, and my joke delivery is flawless. Perhaps it has something to do with having just the right crew put together. Like our friend, Dave. Someone mentioned once that the best thing about telling stories to Dave is that he is generous with his laughter, so you always feel funny when you talk to Dave. It's great to be around a group of people who all get each other's humor.

Tonight was funny like that...a lot of fun. Though not a natural blonde, I tend to get a little giggly when I am excited. With the right people, I am comfortable enough to heartily laugh at things that amuse me without feeling judged and awkward.

Somehow in the course of the festivities, I mentioned offhand, "I hate America." A simple enough sentence, but it got quite the dramatic response: "But Meredith, aren't you from Texas?"

Haha. We all laugh. If Dave had been there, he'd have laughed the hardest. Because everyone knows that I am a Texas stereotype: a few parts Hick and a generous helping of Southern Belle, I'm born to be a homemaker, ride horses, praise Jesus, and love my country.

As I drove home, I realized that there are a lot of things like this that people have mis-assumed about me. But I can't actually fault them because I'm the one promoting the stereotype. It's like I've assumed a certain "place" among my friends. As the official Old-School-Texas One, I have to make certain jokes and argue along certain lines because that's the part I play in this drama. I roll with it. Any time there's a chance to throw in a "...and that's why we should all have babies" line, I'm all over it. Done and done.

The problem is, as I change and grow, I'm starting to reevaluate for myself what I really feel and believe about these things. The one-liners are funny enough in conversation, so I keep throwing them out there. But all the while, I'm cheating my friends of the opportunity to actually know me. Maybe I'm belittling them by suggesting that they don't understand that much of my joking is a facade, but when I take an honest look at these issues myself, I can't even tell what's true about me anymore.

For instance, I've always been a huge proponent of marriage and family, but lately I don't even like kids. I find myself being really judgmental when I see a family with an unruly child...even a darling and curious child...pulling a Samantha and wondering why those little brats are even allowed in public at all. At the very least, they should be seen and not heard. Plus, in this body-obsessed culture of LA, the thought of actually going through child birth myself is an additional stress. If I'm not happy with my body now, how in the world am I going to deal with loose skin and stretch marks?? Yuck! Then, I have to give up my entire social life because no one else has kids. What about all those play dates I imagined with my girlfriends and their children? In my College Station future, we were all going to have kids at the same time, be stay-at-home-moms, and visit each other daily to let our kids play, so we could play too. But that won't happen in LA.

And now it hits me, it's not the Southernisms that I've decided to repudiate--it's the thought of trying to fit them into my new life here. I've finally acclimated enough to LA to realize that all those old dreams would be nightmares here. Like dating and marriage--it's not that I'm anti-marriage or relationships, but I'm definitely not impressed with the version of them that I see here. I'm not especially interested in dating the LA way. Maybe I should clarify this for my non-native readers. Now, I don't want to start making assumptions, so mind you this is purely based on my own experiences, but there seem to be only a few options here:

1) Go for the super-Christian. This type may or may not actually love Jesus, but he sure is good at playing the church game. There are a couple of sub-species of this type--the hard-core right wing crazy and the laissez fare Sunday-smiler. Neither is really ideal because the first would beat down even me with a Bible and out-rule-follow me till he's blue in the face. Then the more chill type is also a little too willing to let things slide, enough so that I end up slip-sliding down a slope I never meant to get started on.

2) Play the LA game. This means you keep on doing what you do, being a fabulous and "contended" single. Then, when things get lonely, you call up your back-pocket boy toy for that much needed attention. It's a fairly shoddy way to go about things, but it prevents the complications of a relationship. You don't have to give up any of your own ambitions, and when he stops meeting your needs, you move on. Functional. But it kind of makes me sick to my stomach.

With an either/or like this, it's easy to understand when I say I'm over the dating thing. I would be all for dating and marriage in my Texas way of doing it, but if it has to look like this, I'm just not interested. Oh, the stories I could tell of all the bad dates I've been on in the last three years! Being single is definitely not so bad. If I wanted to be married half as badly as I joke about, I'd have compromised and done it already, but it's just not worth it to pursue the kind of relationships that I've been offered. Maybe one day something more on par with what I'm looking for will come around...then I can go back to being my stereotype, and everyone will be comfortable knowing I am who they pinned me to be. For now, though, it's hard to fake the heart-flutters that are supposed to come with young love, so I just keep out of the way.

I still don't know if I should make a point to stop with the misleading jokes. They really are amusing to me. Any anyone who really takes the time to know me will discover that I've got a lot more depth than that. Laugh on.


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And as a side note, Justine deserves props for that last song because she "allegedly" played it for me first...