Portrait of the Comic as A Young Girl
TL:DR my mom found stories of me as a child and I was adorable/insufferable.
I was visiting my folks in Kansas City this past week and my mom had recently found her “mom journal” from when my sister and I were little. While my husband, my dad, and I sat around my kitchen table playing Cribbage and eating leftover carrot cake (Dad’s bday shared the weekend with father’s day), Mom read a few entries aloud, reminding some of us and informing the others about what I’d been like with only four or five years of experience on the planet.
Most of it was stories of me correcting people.
They’re cute, very believable snapshots of a girl developing a complete if not rigid understanding of the English language. Of words and what they mean.
“Are you looking for Santa?” a restaurant patron had once apparently asked me.
“I’m looking forward to Santa.” I corrected him before turning my attention back to my (I’m almost positive) kid’s meal chicken fingers.
At another past time, someone burnt popcorn in the kitchen at my preschool, and we all had to evacuate the building.
“Did the fire alarm go off?” my dad asked me on the day’s walk home.
“No,” I am told I said to him, incredulously, “It went on.”
On Tuesday, I got to reunite with my beloved childhood baby-sitters who, once again, sat with me in a familiar place (this time my porch) and told me stories of the girl who grew up to be me.
I was rigid, with a steel trap of a memory. My games had rules, processes, that were not to be altered, lest the fun be totally ruined. The books I wanted read to me at night were those I had already memorized, turning bedtime more into a quiz than a shared story experience.
You know, the classic childhood of a future comedy writer.
The inclinations of this child that was once me make a lot of sense to the adult I now am. My affinity for the familiar leaves me more inclined to rewatch a show I’ve seen than to start a new one “before I’m ready.” What was once a “rules obsession” now manifests as anxiety that turns the aftermath of most social events into a rundown of which rules of society I probably broke between ordering the first negroni and saying “buh bye now” instead of just “bye” because I guess I can just never do anything freaking NORMAL in my whole life, can I!
“It’s wild,” I told my husband this morning as we walked to the train from the WGA picket line, “that I grew up to write comedy.”
“I don’t think so,” he said, “You can’t really do this job without knowing ‘the rules.’ That’s kind of the basis for the whole thing.”
He’s right of course. Because he’s a genius and the best and haha guess what, I married him (brag).
That little girl who bristled so acutely when sentences weren’t quite right, or people were playing the game all wrong, grew up to point all that out professionally. To narrow her eyes and curl the corners of her mouth in a way that used to scream “this bitch is a tattletale” but that now almost hums “hmm, no…that’s not it.” And I find such joy in exploring and prodding and elaborating on how “not it” so so many things are.
And it’s tempting (or feels cinematic) sometimes, to distance myself as far as possible from that little girl on a home video who once threw a stuffed animal across the room and screamed “THANKS A LOT, GUYS” because my friends had started singing backup to my solo when I had specifically asked them not to. To say, “That girl didn’t know this kind of stuff could be fun.” To say, “Now I do.” To say, “Now I am better than her.” To say, “Don’t worry. I have outgrown her.”
But that’s unfair to us.
Because while there are so many stories of the girl I’ve been that I believe but don’t remember, there is at least one that I do.
When I was in Language Arts class in (maybe?) fourth grade, the teacher was going over the difference between your and you’re. “Your is possessive,” she told us, “Your coat, your turn, your time out chair.”
“But y-o-u-apostrophe-r-e,” she continued, “is a conjunction that means YOU ARE. So the apostrophe takes the place of the A. Like you’re nice, or you’re on the basketball team, or you’re going to go straight to the time out chair if you don’t sit the heck down right now.”
“That’s funny!” I said.
“What is?”
“That your without an apostrophe is the possessive one. Because usually when something belongs to someone, we use an apostrophe! Like Taylor’s tree or Mom’s birthday! It’s funny that when something belongs to YOU, we’re not supposed to use an apostrophe.”
My teacher went back and explained your vs. you’re again.
“I know the difference!” I said, “I just thought it was funny that we use apostrophes for possessive things but your is the possessive one between your and you’re and it’s the one where you’re not supposed to use the apostrophe!”
She told me she’d sit with me after class and explain it one more time so I’d understand.
I’d been taught a rule. But it didn’t apply everywhere. I wasn’t confused. I just…thought it was funny.
I still do.
I think that girl who is me but also not would really like what I get to do for a living. I think we both would like to get back to it as soon as fucking possible.
<3 TKP
I know it’s been a while and I’m sorry and I’ve missed you.
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