Saturday, June 5, 2010

Will The Real Me Please Stand Up

   I hate fake...for a very long time I didn't know that I did, I just knew that I didn't like clowns, mascots, and ventriloquist dummies. I didn't like the way I felt when I was near them, like I wanted to walk...no, run, very fast in the other direction and hide from their fakeness.

   I've tried to use the -Be Very Still And They Will Go Away Method- sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Like the time I'm at Disney World eating in a restaurant with my family and I spot Chip and Dale and at the same time, they spot me. "Oh Laudy", I'm thinking, so I begin to act nonchalant and casual and make NO eye contact...oh yeah, I was a chipmunk magnet. They beelined straight to me, not my kid, to me. They were bent on drawing the attention of the whole restaurant to our table, and if that wasn't enough, they try to make me dance with them (I'm having lunch remember?). Thanks to my husband, I have a snapshot of that occasion, my face is flaming red.

    You might say, "Jeanna, you're a dancer, you're used to getting up in front of people and dancing". This is true...but that wasn't it, to me, it was like in real life when people come up to me being all fake and in front of everybody wanting to be my bestie, and when I pass them in the store they somehow aren't so congenial. Me not likey the schmoozers. You gotta be freal to be in my show. 

     "When Mascots Attack" and "Night of the Living Ventriloquist Dummy" are the names of the two books I plan to write about my experiences with my poser phobia. Telling the tales of dog mascots coming up behind me at baseball games and me screaming so loud that the ball players come out of the dugouts to look at the scene I have so not wanted to create...and the frightening night I spent at my friend's house, as a child, with a Charlie McCarthy dummy staring at me as he lay between us. That would not have been so bad but he had taken my friend's voice and he did all the talking, I wanted her to talk, not him. I SO wanted to poke him in his big huge plastic eyes.

   Even though I require genuineness from others and myself, I find that I am also a Fake ID card carrier just like all the rest. I can be jovial at work and a jerk at home. Full of mercy for one and merciless on another. Singing 'Oh Happy Day' one day and then singing 'Oh Crappy Day' the next. Yeah, I admit it. I claim the Fake Amendment, I reserve all rights to be fake as deemed necessary.

   We all carry two forms of ID. Our real us and our knockoff us, which I hate, but just like Paul said, "the very thing I hate, I do". We see people in public places and think "I'm going to go around to this aisle so I won't have to...'Hiii, how are you?' (nodding head fakely and giving double fake smile), 'I'm great'". Or we go to church and pretend that everything is okay, even when it's not, and we talk the 'church talk' and show our Fake ID's to our church friends and would not dare let anyone see us without our clown make up on.

   Maybe I think that you really wouldn't like the real me if you knew that I wasn't always upbeat and sweetalicious. That encouraging words don't always flow out of my mouth and sometimes I think about me first. I may show up and flash my Fake ID card so I can get into 'Da Club' and be my other me.

   The real you will always come out, at some point or another. Do you like the real you? Or do you pursue the fake you? Which one makes you feel comfortable and satisfied? I know the real me likes to come home after a long day in a dress and heels and put on my dance pants and a tee, going barefoot, that's me 2 a tee. Do certain people pull out the fake in you? If yes, maybe a decision to not let those people have that kind of authority over you would be a plus. Are there people that draw genuineness from you? Those are the beneficial friendships. They won't let you use your Fake ID card.

   "What chu know 'bout me?" (quote from Lil Mama from 'My Lipgloss') Most people do know the game, they know the real from the unreal. James 1:8 says that a man (person) double-minded  in his thoughts is unstable in all his ways, let not that person think that they will receive anything from the Lord. So it's time to hate the game, not the player. Hate the fake, not the faker. Burn the Fake ID card and keep only what's genuine. So when somebody asks me, "are you for real?", I'll respond by standing up with the real me and let all the clowns, mascots, and ventriloquist dummies of the world know that I will no longer let fake use my ID card ever again.

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