In which we revisit my childhood brat self

That last entry is the most popular thing I’ve ever written – more than 10 times the number of views I usually have. That could have something to do with me linking to it with the comment, ‘Sorry if this is too much information’. Quite a lot of people probably clicked and then went away again almost immediately, disappointed at the lack of drama or naked body parts – the naked photos are a few entries back, folks. I could keep adding such interest-inducing comments to the links, but I don’t think I could keep the hyperbole up (‘More too much information!’; ‘Ladybits!’; ‘MY WHOLE PRIVATE DIARY!’).

Anyway, the cramps are gone and all appears to be fine so far. /coil update

I’ve been sat here doing a jigsaw puzzle and half-heartedly writing a new entry in my head. It seems too late to blog about Christmas, but who wants another internet piece on New Year and the great wave of incoming resolutions? So, back to Christmas and the ungrateful youth of today.

There’s been quite a lot of outraged articles about kids on Twitter complaining because their expensive iTrinkets are the wrong colour, or they didn’t get an iTrinket or a designer watch or whatever.

And no, I don’t understand the ungratefulness over a £400 piece of equipment because it’s stupid expensive and not something I ever would have been given as a child. But sense of entitlement aside – I can’t imagine anyone of the whole three people reading this entry didn’t at some point get a Christmas present they weren’t horribly disappointed in, and that they didn’t complain either to a friend or their journal that it wasn’t quite what they wanted (maybe some people even ranted at their parents –I was always too scared of hurting their feelings, except for one occasion when the disappointment was too much – see below). Twitter is your friend now, folks. Blogs are journals. Disappointment is still disappointment.

A Christmas Story:

Or how a bad Christmas present changed my career path. Possibly.

My parents continued with stockings for me and my sisters long after we all knew Santa didn’t actually come to visit (because he’s really busy, obviously, not because he doesn’t exist). So we would still write the letter requesting a specific present that, ideally, we would definitely get (with my parents moderating our expectations), and then the list of ‘I would like’ was the hopeful list of other things we might get. So this particular year I requested some proper, decent make-up artist standard face paints. I wanted to be able to do aging and animals and special effects – I was so into dressing up and making people up and I wanted to expand on that with really good, accurate, non-oily face paints. The palette type, with brushes. I was really looking forward to opening my stocking and turning people into tigers and butterflies and whatever. On a side note – I still love doing this stuff (which is sad, given I can’t apply normal woman make-up to save my life) and I wish I’d kept it up.

Anyway, woke up, opened stocking and there is… a violin case.

No kidding. It had been on my ‘I would like’ list, but I wasn’t desperate for it. It was a nice modern case of the type you can sling across your back, rather than the school-instrument hard case type, where you always feel a bit like a gangster. But… it was practical. And schoolish. And not fun. And probably quite expensive, actually.

I’m typing this and I can still feel the gut-wrenching horrible disappointment and I was so SO sad that rather than leave my room and show my parents, I sat there and cried and felt guilty for not wanting the fucking violin case AT ALL. Eventually my mum knocked on the door and I tried to smile and instead cried all over her and said ‘This isn’t what I asked for!’ and she tried to calm me down and pointed out the nice things about the case and how useful it would be, and heaven knows she must have felt awful and also a bit pissed off with me. But it didn’t matter. I was already getting sick of playing the violin at this point and this felt like more pressure to focus on music (there was a lot of pressure to focus on music as a possible career [I was not, and am not, that good], with the end result that by the end of A-level I basically quit for two years before teaching myself guitar). Finally she said, Well, wait for the rest of the presents. And under the tree were two small packets of baby face paints – the oily crayon types that I was trying to get past -, some tooth blackout that never worked and some face wax. More tears.

I sound like a brat writing this. I was a brat. But I was a really, really disappointed brat. In retrospect my parents obviously misunderstood the make-up palette request and then thought I’d probably prefer to have the big present in my stocking, but that didn’t occur to me at all at the time. It was just a horrible, horrible Christmas during which I was a horrible, horrible kid. I pretty much gave up on the theatrical face painting after this. I COULDA BEEN A MAKE UP ARTIST CONTENDER. Okay, probably not – but I’m still sad whenever I think of the face paints that never were, and have a little twist of bitterness when I catch sight of the violin case covered in dust at home.

The End

Yeah, not the best blog entry ever. But still – anyone have any disappointing present stories?