Smile upon me

Well, I guess it just suggests that this is just what happiness is.

…and I’ll smile upon you, too.

chickadee (june 2010)

When I was 6, my mom enrolled me in this personality development class over the summer. She was alarmed that her daughter was way too shy and unrefined for her own good. Of course, I didn’t know how or why she thought that at that time – still don’t, actually. But as all kids do, I played to my mother’s whims.

I remember being the youngest kid there. They made us read lines in front of the entire class, sing, dance, act, what-have-you. I must’ve done it all with much gusto that I landed the lead role to our recital play. Mom was ecstatic, thinking that the 2-month course actually worked it’s magic on her tomboy of a daughter. Hooray. And I lived happily ever after… Right.

Almost two decades have passed and I still have mornings when I’d wake up with this particular memory lingering somewhere in the middle of my conscious and subconscious. It’s weird how our psyches push us to remember the strangest things at the strangest times that we almost always discard them as insignificant by-products of our REM’s.

Truth is, they’re not insignificant. Neither are they just dreamland garbage. They involuntarily float to the surface simply because it has to; because we unwaringly summoned it to help us answer some age-old existential questions like, “Why am I the way that I am?”

This “Chickadee” memory – I coin it that since it was the lead character’s name on my theatrical debut – sheds some light on my seemingly shameless and uninhibited nature. See, I already had personality even before that. Thing is, it wasn’t the kind of personality my mom wanted to see. It was a personality revamp she wanted. And though, I managed to make her believe that it worked, what that summer really did was make me believe that I can do and be anything I want when I want to. It instilled arrogance, overconfidence, and yes, a tad too much personality in this kid.

So, I went on my way believing that I can do anything I want whenever, wherever. I’m still that li’l “Chickadee” whose every outspoken word and action never fail to entertain. That’s all well and good to some degree but see, I also saw the world and everything else in it as larger than life. I thought everyone was as shameless as me. I honestly thought I was the norm.

But of course I found out it wasn’t so. The “norm” needs to be in a state of inebriation before they become the “ab-norm,” of which I’m obviously a part of. And how I love being so. I can’t imagine myself being any other way.

I am very comfortable in my own skin, in my own ways that I’m mostly oblivious to the ways of the world. In my mom’s attempts to make me “normal” I ended up being extremely not. And I couldn’t be more thankful.

Would I be any different if I never became “Chickadee”? Probably not. But at least I’d always have this memory, shallow as it is, to see me through during bouts of self-doubt. For once upon a time, the world was a stage and I was it’s star.

I may have too much personality, but man… What a boring world it’d be without fools like me.

PS: And I will shamelessly cheer for the LAKERS every year as I would sing karaoke in front of strangers til the day I croak.