Saturday, February 19, 2011

Fatherly Love and the Great Grammatical Error Parade

I think I should start by explaining the title. If you're reading this blog, you probably already know the story behind it, and you also probably think I'm pretty lame for wanting to bring up my childhood nickname in the title of a blog. My witty, English major sisters are both holding their breath right now. They have each done enough "proof reading/saving me from public humiliation" to know that there will, undoubtedly, be around 200 grammatical errors per post, not counting my complete lack of knowledge of where to put a comma, in, a, sentence. Personally, I think they are kind of just like sentence decoration. Spritz them around here and there and you magically look more intelligent than half of teen pop culture that is apparently still unaware of the existence of the comma. (I feel self-conscience because there wasn't a comma in that sentence... Was there suppose to be one? Probably.)

So now that we're all aware that I have not hit my head and decided that I would make a brilliant writer and the world would be a better place with my thoughts in it, let's get down to what this is really about; following your blog.

Seriously.

I want a blog so that I can follow yours. I'm not sure how that even works, really. Maybe I've made it out to be way more exciting than it ever really could be. But all I know is I have to have a blog to legitimately follow a blog. So here it is.

So back to that thing I said I was going to explain at first and didn't; my title. (Semicolons make me feel smart, just like when I wear my glasses.... I really hope I used that semicolon correctly.)

We had a lot of weird nicknames growing up in the Rice household. For example, each girl has a variety of a "moose" nickname. Haley is Big Moose, Hannah is Middle Moose, and I'm Baby Moose. Haley had to stick it out through some of the worst nicknames. If being called a "big moose" wasn't enough, she also had to learn how to emotionally cope with being constantly referred to as "Tuna Tummy."  No one is really sure where Dad came up with our nicknames, but it's kind of become a right of passage at our house.

One of my nicknames growing up was Audgie Podgie. My whole family called me this, and as far as my family nicknames go, it's really not bad. It actually could pass for normal. But Dad, being resiliently weird, took it to the next level. Any time I was particularly upset, he would say in his sweet, empathetic fatherly way "Awww Audgie, it's hard being Queen of the Audgie Podgies when the Audgie Podgies won't obey."

I can't remember ever having a good reaction to this form of consolation. Actually I think it kind of mad me more mad. But sometimes that's kind of how we live, like that we are the main character in the movie about us and all of our extras are just there screwing everything up. And that's what makes me laugh about the title Dad gave me. He couldn't have put it better if he called me "Audgie Podgie, Queen of Nothing." And that's why I love my family.

Now it is time to post this blog and get to the following. I hope I'm not too lame of a blogger now or in the future. I can't promise to not be cheesy.