Picker

Ramona Quimby had a cat named Picky-Picky. 
I always thought that was an exceptionally odd name for cat. But I love Ramona Quimby. And I don't really like cats- so I never particularly cared that Picky-Picky was an odd name. In fact, it grew on me. 
In that same way, Ramona Quimby became a staple in my world: People who haven't read the series by Beverly Cleary often assume Ramona Quimby is a friend of mine, by the animated nature of my descriptions. Almost as if I was there- from Ramona's obsession with boing-boing curls to the way her sister Beezus is in love with Henry. 

Maybe she is a friend of mine: I've found my fondest friends in fiction. 

Somewhere between counting calluses on the playground and longing to be flower girl at Aunt Bea's wedding, I think I became Picky-Picky. 

A friend of mine recently described me as such (no, not as a cat). In that honest-way of friendships, he told me that I was a picker. That I "pick things apart if (I) think they're not good." He went on to say that thereby I destroy them: "A small conflict is a huge calamity and giant disasters are little obstacles." 

Does not everyone do that? 

I don't think I expect too much of people- but I expect them to think like me (and no one thinks quite like me). Over the last few months, I've been reevaluating the way I approach conflict: I'm trying to become the sort of person who doesn't take things too personally. The person who refuses to over-obsess and let's things be 'So Yesterday." 

Basically, I want to be a mix between Ramona Quimby and Hilary Duff.

Children. 

I always thought things would make more sense from adult eyes. Turns out I'm desperate to return to the simplicity of youth: Good Disney Channel and characters who flew off the page. As an adult friendships become invaluable and people seem more important. People fill the holes in our histories, they tell the stories we don't know how to.

Yet we (or me. And people like me) pick the people we love most furthest apart. We hold our love to unfair standards and paint worlds in black and white. Age has made us colorblind- or stolen all crayons from childhood. We're pen people, now. 

But, even in pen, I'm recalling all the flowery ways I can paint love. I'm re-imagining yesterday's doodles and ripping up the pro/con sheet. 

I won't be the one to pick things apart. I'd much rather create- and put things together.