Of all the things in the world that I do, my ability to set arbitrary goals and then adhere to those goals as if they were presented with a threat is unprecedented. Sure, other friends set out to do things that are [dare I say it] productive and even possibly healthy. [I can’t give my friend Jessie all the credit of being productive for giving up Skittles that one year, but it was still impressive.]
Impressive. That’s the word I’m always looking for. Some people do things that are impressive. Me? I’m sure I do impressive things. I can say more words in one minute than most people I know. I can now successfully spell the word ukulele and I know what gewgaw means. I remember odd things that amaze and astound my friends [not actually true but I’ve always thought that was the magic show tagline and I think having a magic show would be fun…y’know… if I was good at magic….]
I have, however, successfully gotten everyone I know to call my wife Dragon.
So really, it was entirely her fault. Some of you know the story. We ran our top words of 2010 on The Face last year. My top word was Carrie. Carrie appeared in my stati 107 times and, considering I did not join The Face until April, that was quite a good lot. Those who followed my old blog know that I alternated between Sharbyland stories and Mom stories. It’s my thing and I just transferred it to a new medium. It’s easy. My wife is a funny little Norwegian who says hilarious shit all the time and I feel like life should be documented for the entire world to see so that we remember we were here and that life is just not all that serious all the time. She is also a spitfire. (Get it? Spitfire? Dragon? No? Okay.)
Anyway, “Carrie” was my top word. 107 times. Carrie’s top word was “Dragon.” This was because Carrie made ONE post that read as follows: “Please put this on your status if you know someone (or are related to someone) who has been eaten by a dragon. My wish for 2010 is that people will understand that being eaten by dragons is not something to be ashamed of. Dragons are nearly unstoppable and are truly terrifying and when people go against them unprepared… there is almost no hope. 93% won’t copy and paste this as they have been eaten by dragons.”
Never before in Sharby history has it been so blatantly laid out before me, the imbalance of our deep and passionate love. [Also untrue. Unless sitting on the couch Facebook mocking every awards show and Republican debate suddenly counts as passion…] Here I am, talking about how wonderful and perfect and hilarious my wife is, practically every day, 107 times. And she can’t even use my name more than the four times it appears in this post and the two subsequent posts she made about how much she liked the original post? Well that would just not do.
So as a joke, I declared that my top word of 2011 would be “Dragon” and I knew that the only way to make that happen was to [everything you need to know about Kelly logic is right here] simply change my wife’s name on The Face to Dragon. Easy peasy.
But a funny thing happened on the way to a completely pointless pursuit: Everyone else began to pick it up. It started out with early year parties in which I simply [and in my very special, quiet, non-keyboard-inappropriate-making-up-songs way] informed everyone in faux anger why Dragon was my wife’s name now. Then I told a few more people. Then I continued to explain it on Facebook. And everyone jumped on board.
Two important things: 1) Dragon enjoys her new name, I think, and was very sad when she could not figure out how to change her Facebook name permanently. Really? I can “like” horribly offensive images and this generation’s equivalent of junk mail or email forwards, but my wife cannot change her name to Dragon? Fascists. 2) We have received numerous pieces of mail addressed to Kelly & Dragon. Even the Post Office is on board with this.
So if you’re keeping score at home, let me review: Out of completely pretend anger, I decided to do a project with the end goal of one moment in 2011 when I can use a stupid Facebook app and have it churn out that my top word is “Dragon” and feel satisfied. It is like a joke that has a 365 day punchline. And now that we’re so close, that we’re almost down to less than two weeks, I am about as excited as a normal person might be about, I dunno, a trip to Hawaii. At some point, the Top Words of 2011 thing will begin circling and my f(F)ace will light up with joy.
The super special crazy thing about this is that I don’t think we can just start calling her Carrie again. She is Dragon now. I accidentally changed my wife’s name.
This right here, kids, is what you can do if you decide to change the world.
