Let’s Play Happy Families

Have you ever given something away only to wish later on that you could magically get it back?

I’m not referring to time, opportunities, youth, your heart, your mind, your soul, or your virginity…

I mean an actual thing, an object, a book, a toy, or a pack of playing cards.

I’ve moved around a lot in my life ever since I was a child. In fact my parents were traveling when I was born. It’s only in the last couple of years that I’ve settled down and… it’s a weird and rather wonderful experience.

Throughout my life I’ve given away many things. It’s easier to move around if you’re not holding on to stuff. Mostly I don’t miss what I’ve given away because… I’m very forgetful, and anything which doesn’t get forgotten goes with me in memory.

Once in a while I wish I could magic-blink something I gave away back into my life.

Of course some of those things I could have again simply by buying them, and if I do it online it could be with me the next day. But that’s… but I’m a cheapskate. Any sudden desires of want get met with a – Do I need it? And the answer is usually “No.”

Of all the means which wisdom acquires to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is friendship.

– Epicurus

When you move around a lot, have no fixed abode, it can make it challenging to make friends, to have relationships. It is partly due to you, and partly due to others.

I remember someone saying to me – I can’t be friends with you until you have a permanent address and telephone number.

It hurt, but it also made sense and explained aspects of why other people tended not to want to invest time in getting to know me. I know that wasn’t the only reason for that, but it was definitely a part of it.

The internet and social media has been a great blessing. Yes, it can also be a curse. There are always two sides to everything, and many variations in between. It has allowed people to have a fixed abode online while moving around offline. They have somewhere to call their home even if they don’t have a physical home.

We can make friends with people from all over the world, without the distances and differences between us being as great as they may be in the physical world outside of the web.

And you can get to know people as they are on the inside… which is usually far more intriguing, interesting, fascinating and so much more, than our outsides reveal of us. Without being able to see each other, perhaps we see each other far more clearly.

Which brings me to a question asked by Crushed Caramel in her post: The Brilliant Tom Burton Has Nominated Me For The Sunshine Blogger Award…Again

YOU ARE ON MY LIST OF NOMINEES BECAUSE YOU CONSISTENTLY MAKE YOUR POSTS INTERESTING, YOU ARE FULL OF PERSONALITY AND YOU SUPPORT THE BLOGGING COMMUNITY SO MUCH – BUT TELL ME, ARE YOU LIKE THIS IN REAL LIFE?

I think it’s an excellent question, one of those which says what we all may wonder at times about those we meet online.

Online we can be whoever we want to be, we can choose our own body, our own skin, our own origins, our own face, our own name, and create our own home, life, reality.

We can mold, edit, direct, control, our personality to suit whatever purpose we have given to our online self. We can write a starring role for ourselves, act the part and become a superstar, a celebrity, an influencer… just by saying that’s who we are.

Yes, it’s a little bit more complicated than that, but… not always.

I’m not one of Crushed Caramels’ nominees, so I’m free to not answer her question, but I wouldn’t have borrowed it if I was going to leave it unanswered.

My A to her Q: Yes. Except in person I don’t talk as much as I do online. I’m comfortable with silence, and don’t tend to rush in to fill uncomfortable silences. And yes, I scare the crap out of people offline too when I do decide to share my thoughts with them as I do online in my posts.

“I wondered how many people there were in the world who suffered, and continued to suffer, because they could not break out from their own web of shyness and reserve, and in their blindness and folly built up a great distorted wall in front of them that hid the truth.”

― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

Along the path of our online Odyssey, we meet others. Some love us, some hate us, some love us for a while and then hate us, some hate us for a while and then maybe find that we’re not as bad as they thought we were. People come, people go, we come, we go.

Every now and then we click with people. Sometimes we know why and sometimes it’s a mystery.

Which brings me to Weekly Prompts: Photo Challenge Mysterious – wherein is asked: Are you curious, do you take notice of what is going on around you? Have you spotted anything mysterious? Do you have pictures of something you or others are unable to identify or are curious about?

I am curious, I do take notice of what is going on both around me and inside of me, and I did spot something mysterious recently…

I was browsing my WordPress reader when I spotted a post by Melanie of Sparks From A Combustible Mind: Familia…

I clicked and settled in to read more.

Melanie was playing along with a blogging community activity started by Teresa of The Haunted Wordsmith: Blogging Family – A Fun Challenge

The gist of the challenge is:

Think about the following “family” positions and tell us which blogger would fill that role for you.

“Family” Roles:

• That one uncle who is always around (usually telling Dad jokes)
• Older jaded sibling who loved to torture you as a kid but is also very protective
• Middle sibling who loves to have fun and stays just inside the law that takes you along for the ride
• Younger sibling who likes to tag along everywhere
• Crazy aunt who smothers people with kisses and smells like a perfume factory
• Long lost relative who is busy gallivanting around
• The Cousin It of the family (odd ball but loyal)

Teresa had given the role of “Crazy Aunt” to Melanie, and as I looked to see which bloggers Melanie had chosen to give roles in her family, I did a double-take when I saw this:

    

Melanie’s Blogging Familia… (does a screenshot count as a (family) photo?)

   

It was a heart-warming surprise, thank you very much, Melanie, for including me in your family ❤

I’m so used to being the kid who other kids don’t invite to play with them, that… I was almost tempted to completely embody my role as the long lost relative and hide.

But then I thought: Well of course other kids don’t invite you to play with them because every time they do you refuse!

However…

Sometimes the reason other kids don’t invite me to play with them is because when they do I accept and then… scare the crap out of them with my gallivanting around like a galloping centaur stung by a fruit fly using the stinger it got from a moth who broke it off of a hornet during a battle royale.

   

That may be the hornet-beating moth

  

As me myself and I and the others were debating on whether to play the Blogging Family game…

A memory popped up of a pack of playing cards – Jaques Happy Families (a few of which are shown at the top of this post, link to source of image at the very bottom of the post) – which I used to have as a child.

And I wished that I still had the pack because I had this brilliantly stupid idea… which I shall leave as a mystery that I am sure you can solve (although you may need to turn the knob in your mind to the dashingly dumb setting and I’m not sure everyone has one of those).

At some point all of us inside reached a consensus and decided that it was probably for the best if I didn’t play along because…

one: I already scare the crap out of other bloggers enough as it is…

two: My concept of a blogging family is one where everyone gets to be whoever they want to be…

three: I’m a long lost relative who gallivants around doing things in my own crazy, weird, peculiar way for a reason 😉

  

  

Featured image is Jaques’ Happy Families from The World of Playing Cards