Friday, March 22, 2013

Non-Fiction Friday--Favorite Character Flaw



OH SAY CAN YOU SEE  
 KRISANN GENTRY 

I almost named this blog after my favorite trait. Snark.

My husband bears the brunt of this one conversationally, but I do sometimes wind up spilling out onto unsuspecting bystanders, poor souls. Sometimes I think I should feel terrible, but when something so brilliantly witty occurs to me, it's hard, very very hard, for it to stay in my brain. It used to be quite rare, in fact.

I can't remember what started it now, but I recall a day early in our marriage when Aaron said or did something laughable. Not intentionally, just something that made me chuckle and made him self-conscious. So early in the relationship, a more conservative new wife would have made great efforts to ease the bruising on the ego of her beloved. I chose a different route. As he turned away, frustrated at my increasing enjoyment of humor at his expense, and huffed, "Don't laugh at me!"
I attempted to calm him by explaining, "Babe! I'm not laughing at you! I'm laughing because of you."

It went about as you'd expect.

Sometimes I think this overwhelming reservoir of sarcasm may be what keeps driving me back to writing, in fact. A basic understanding of the social mores which call for feelings left mostly unhurt means that I've developed a filtering base for some of the more harsh or cutting snark, to be directed elsewhere. These comments get to live in a magical land where someone a lot like me gets to have raw and unfiltered conversations with people a lot like the people I know or encounter. I've come up with some fantastic scripts by it. If I'm going to play out imaginary conversations in my head anyway, I may as well be entertained by them.

When I meet a person who can handle, or even keep up with my snark, well... they've likely won my heart forever (you know who you are).

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Read more essays from this prompt:
Josiah's submission
Moody's submission


Want to make one of your own? Next week's prompt is FLASH FICTION.

Write a short story from the starting point, "Caterpillar." 




1 comment:

  1. Okay, you've done it!
    Seeing the "coming soon" next to my name gave me the mental kick in the ass I needed. Thank you!

    ReplyDelete