Every weekday morning that I manage to make it through my email before noon, I do a thing on Twitter/Facebook that I call #morningstumble. Basically I go to StumbleUpon and hit the button until I find something that makes me smile or makes me think, then I share it with that hashtag. It's one way of ensuring I'm not talking about my damn self all the time.
However, it often exposes my dirty little secret: there are huge swaths of culture that in my thirty-eight years I have missed. This morning, I tweeted this picture with the caption "I have no idea what is going on here, but the cats look pissed."
I happened to be on a conference call with my co-workers when I tweeted it, and no sooner had my fingers left the keyboard (I am not kidding, it was that fast), Stacy said, "Oh, Rita, you're JOKING! Right? RIGHT? You know what that picture is that you just tweeted?"
(crickets)
I could hear the panic creeping into her voice, something akin to when one sees one's friend drop ice cubes into a wine glass in front of their connoisseur other friend.
At this point, I realized it was something important I should know but clearly did not, so I just sat there to make it all worse. Sometimes when you're busted, you just have to own it.
"RITA! YOU KNOW THAT'S A VERY FAMOUS SELF-PORTRAIT BY SALVADOR DALI!"
Nope! And I just proved it very publicly!
I think it worried her more than it did me, because I'm currently in grips of an ongoing anxiety attack about something else, which I'm sure will pass in a few weeks. The fact that all I saw when I looked at that picture were some wet fucking cats should probably be more horrifying than it is.
And I actually felt comforted by the fact that though Stacy was taken aback by my unwashedness, she loves me enough to click on my links. REFRAMING! Look at me go!
