The Downside of Yellow

So, here's the deal. Life in a yellow shirt world has it's drawbacks. The problem in a nutshell? I'm too damn nice now.

In the past several weeks (technically two months and change) I have been accused of smiling. Of giggling. Of being generally pleasant. Of being perky. Spunky. OH GOD ... OF BEING CUTE!

I could attempt to deny it, but sadly, the proof was staring me in the face last week when a couple of you wondered out loud about my sanity. One look at what I had written and it became crystal clear just how serious this had become.

I DIDN'T SAY I HATED MINCE PIE

There it was, in black and white. When given the chance to rant endlessly about perhaps my biggest food HATES of all time, when prompted to list "foods I find disgusting" I actually said,

I think disgusting is a little harsh. I go for the more genteel "I do not prefer"

That answer, to use the descriptive powers of TinyTuna, makes me want to barf up a pile. How could I manage to only turn up my virtual nose at eggplant, rhubarb, okra, oatmeal, olives and cake? And really, it's not that I don't prefer them. It's that I DON'T LIKE THEM AT ALL except cake, which I truly do not prefer, but will eat when necessary, and oatmeal, which I'll only eat on Beaver Island when threatened, which is another story for another day.

I've been fretting about this overabundance of good cheer for awhile. I knew I couldn't be an effective teacher or a credible soprano if I was nice all the time. I needed to find my inner Rottweiller, and fast. Problem was, every time I talked to Scout or heard a song on the radio or felt the buzz of my cell phone telling me I had a text message, I got all damn squishy again.

It wasn't until Wednesday when I was at work helping a frantic undergraduate singer. He had a song and it was too high, and was desperate to find it in a lower key. After giving him several volumes to search, he was still out of luck. With utter panic in his voice he asked, "If I can't find this in a lower key, WHAT AM I GOING TO DO???"

The first thing that popped into my head was "buy tighter underwear."

I felt so much better. The inky blackness had crept back into my heart. Sure, the yellow shirt is still hanging in the closet, and Scout is fabulous, but all those wonderful things that I love and make my world go around, like the snark, the wicked humor, and the obvious superiority of Sopranos ... it's back and it's AWN!