Friday, May 23, 2008

Kat's Memoir

I was thinking about writing a memoir…telling my life story. Only problem: my life story is not that interesting. Then there is that whole honesty thing surrounding memoirs. Take the James Frey novel, Million Little Pieces…which I happened to love. Oprah seemed to have a problem with the author’s million little lies…so she broke him into a million little pieces…in front of a million little viewers. I’d like to read Oprah’s book when she writes one…and check all her facts.

So let’s take a look at my story: I have 1 husband, 3 kids, and 1 dog. My kids are not kids…they are young adults. So I need to change my blogspot bio and reveal that 2 of my children are in their 20s, but that just sounds so old….not for them, but for me. And my “baby” is fast approaching her senior year. You see…my daily life is lacking in material, but I do have a past. Maybe I could write about that.

Maybe I could write about the earlier period of my life…the part that I don’t mention that often…for obvious reasons. It is a little unusual so I am a little hesitant. You see, people have always believed I grew up in a military family, traveling around the country and the world. Actually my past is more colorful than that.

When I was growing up, we lived with a traveling circus…not the Big Apple Circus…but smaller…the Crab Apple Circus. My mother was the fat lady who sang in the closing ceremony of every performance. They used to wheel her out in a cart. My dad, bless his heart, was a one-armed lion tamer. One day his overly trusted lion, Leo, let him know that he was the King of the Forest and not a big pussycat. My playmates were the circus dwarfs. We used to spend many afternoons playing leap frog between performances. I worked hard at learning to become a high flying trapeze artist.

After a few years of traveling with the circus, things started to go down hill. Not enough people were interested in our freak show…I mean circus act. Things got slow for the circus and I kept breaking bones trying to learn my trapeze act. We decided to leave the circus life behind. It was time for my mother to loose a few pounds before having other children and restrict her singing to only the shower. My dad got a great looking prosthesis and took a desk job in accounting. We moved into a lovely suburban town and I was enrolled in school where I impressed the kids with my above-average skills on the monkey bars during recess. Those were the days….

Maybe I will write my memoir...get my life story down on paper. Just don’t check the facts.

No comments: