I just want you readers to know how important you are to me. Because without you, I’m just another plus-sized weirdo who talks too much and overshares everything.
Instead, I’m a newspaper columnist who writes too much and overshares everything. But I actually get paid for it, thanks to your subscriptions. Back in the days when I was a daily hard news reporter, I would sometimes shake my head in wonderment that someone was paying me to gossip for a living. I’d call the sources on my beat and chat them up, just to find out what was going on in my never-ending hunt for stories. This was never a chore. It was the fun part.
Every reporter has a slightly different style of working his or her sources. Decades ago, I had a colleague who was very pretty and petite. She was also busty and prone to wearing low-cut tops. She covered the police beat brilliantly, which is hard because cops don’t generally like or trust reporters. But she would walk into the police station, ask to see the daily police blotter (which was hand written back then), and then plop her ample bosoms onto the counter as she went through the entries.
Every male cop in the vicinity — and of course most of them were — found a reason to walk past her while she was doing this and some of them chatted her up. Underneath her cleavage lurked the heart of a ferocious reporter, but she giggled girlishly at their jokes and generally made it enjoyable to be around her. It worked.
Another colleague whose name you might recognize if I shared it (so I won’t) used to go around offices with a bag of Hershey’s kisses, and hand them out. She’d just plop herself down in the closest chair, start talking and hand out a kiss. Did I mention she was also comely, funny and shapely? Let’s just say no one ever threw her out of their office. And she came back with some great stories.
Now, these techniques would never work for me for reasons I’m sure you can deduce for yourselves. But I just love gossip. I love to hear it, I love to share it. And I wanted to make sure that the sources on my beat would take my phone calls, because many were busy and important people. So I made sure I had a tidbit of juicy gossip to share. This usually led to a titillating piece of gossip in return. And, sometimes, a great story.
Nowadays, I don’t really have a beat like that, but I do still like to gossip. No one who isn’t infinitely curious about people, places and things can make it as a journalist, whether you’re a blogger or a newspaper columnist like me.
The reason that you readers are important to me goes beyond the fact that you pay my salary (Thank you, by the way). But I’ve been aware since I was a small child that I am, essentially, a weirdo. I don’t think like other people do and frequently behave in a genuinely weird manner. No, I don’t wear a foil hat on my head and hear transmissions from Mars, but I’ve also grown to accept that I’m just never going to think like the average person. This made me tremendously unhappy when I was a child, because I lacked the basic skills — such as tree climbing — that the other kids had. To my secret shame, I was more likely to be found sitting under the tree, reading a library book about the mating rituals of South Sea islanders.
I always tried to fit in with the other kids, but all that happened was that I fell out of the tree and sprained my wrist. I’m reasonably certain that you have some secret shame that you hide from other people, so they won’t judge you. Well, in those days, my whole life was a secret shame. I had few friends and was sometimes mocked for being, well, odd.
But after the equivalent of 189 years of psychotherapy, I grew to like my weirdo self and accept that I’m always going to take the path less traveled. You all help me with that, because you send me encouragement when I reveal my embarrassing moments.
Six years ago, just before I was diagnosed with incurable cancer, I went by myself on a small group Intrepid Travel tour of Northern India. Some of you may remember that was the India trip where I neglected to get a visa to enter the country, so I had to go to Nepal instead and join my tour later.
By the time I joined the tour, which only had five people, the other four people had paired off and I was the odd person out. No one had any interest in me. No one wanted to hear my stories that I’d formerly thought were fascinating. They were unfailingly polite, but that was all. Sometimes, I’d go back to my hotel room and cry, feeling like a left-out little kid again. In the long run, ironically, this was a good thing because the experience taught me that I need to stay here among my friends when I retire, and not go trying to start a new life in parts unknown.
And, thanks to you, dear readers, I do feel like I have a home here. I had an imaginary friend when I was little, but I don’t need one anymore. Thanks for being there and at least feigning interest in my oddball life. Let’s get together. We’ll have cake.