Peer Pressure

Peer pressure. Peer pressure?!!! I thought at my age that peer pressure was a distant whiff of the past. Turns out that ain’t necessarily so. And I should know better. What good ever came out of succumbing to peer pressure? The three times I can vividly remember caving to it when I was a teenager all ended in complete and total failure, humiliation, and grounding. And, yes, there was even talk of making me spend one night in jail to “teach me a lesson.” I only escaped that worse-than-death fate because the nice policeman who nabbed us was someone I knew. He also put the fear of God in us by threatening to call our dads and tell everyone in town what he had caught us doing. Ah, the highs and lows of living in a small town.

So, when some people, whose names I will not reveal just yet – and not because they’re innocent by a long shot – encouraged and, yes, even heckled me to “do” Twitter and Facebook, and start a blog, I resisted. Who has time for that nonsense? And not just your usual run-of-the-mill nonsense, but nonsense that could subject me to global cyber humiliation. Well, as it turns out, I do. Bwah-Bwah-Bwah

First, I can’t see the middle of nowhere from here, because I live smack IN IT. Second, I am the definition of a barely-domesticated goddess. Oh, I cook, do laundry, occasionally scrape food off the floors, and all that. I even clean the bathroom after my husband has been in there and it looks like a small animal has molted. But I am not an artsy-craftsy person. I don’t sew, crochet, knit, quilt, scrapbook, or make lovely centerpieces out of leaves, twigs, old hub caps and fossilized Froot Loops from the back of the pantry. Although I did once create a Daniel Boone costume for my son by making “leather” fringe from some brown paper bags. Oh, and there was that time I spray-painted some pine cones. And, yes, I did actually paint designs on the bathroom walls with a toothbrush. I do like glue guns. I just haven’t found the proper creative outlet for that skill yet. And, last but not least, I have that whole empty nest thing going on. Ugh.

And, just firing a general warning shot across the bow here, I have written a few things that have been published. But I have never been paid for any of my writing, and you generally get what you pay for. I’m just sayin . . .

So, there it is, my first blog post. Don’t like it? Don’t blame me. I was coerced, which is the growed-up word for peer pressure.