Everyone Needs a Theme Song

August 5, 2010

So, I headed back to work today. My outfit was clean (if not exactly professional), my attitude was good (thanks to some serious top-o-lung singing to Justin Bieber in the car), and my agenda not too packed. One thing was missing, though. My theme for the year.

At the beginning of each year, I like to tell my Newspaper and Yearbook students a little parable based upon my sad, small life. For me, it’s a verbal framework on which I can hang the year. I share it with them because I ask them to share their own stories all year long, so it only seems fair. Plus, the glamorous, selfish part of me believes that it gives them a little something to aim for in their middling years—something that looks pasty-white-and-mother-of-two-ish. . . . Hey, it'd be selfish not to entice them to grow old like me! Alas, by the time I’d arrived at school today, I still was theme-less.

That all changed, though, when Mark and I took Hobbes the Hobo dog on his evening drag tonight. On the walk, I was regaling Mark with hilarious and fascinating tales about my first day back at school. I languished over the story about making a list with three colors of Sharpies, I giggled as I recalled the way I ate my juicy peach over the keyboard instead of going to a lunch table, and I casually mentioned that I was in need of a theme. I had a couple of contenders, but they all seemed pretty lame. “Exceeding Expectations” was in the top three, but I hated how it sounded like one of those motivational posters bosses buy when they have a little money left over in their budget at the end of the year.

And that’s when the silly Justin Bieber song wormed its way back into my head. I told Mark I’d sung “You Smile, I Smile” at the top of my voice, with the windows rolled down, TWICE, while driving to East this morning. And I laughed at how I’d fallen for one of his songs despite dreading his summertime concert. That’s when the synapse occurred. For all the moaning and groaning I’d done before heading to this concert--my negativity threatening to harsh Allison’s amped-up Bieber mellow—I had ended up really enjoying the experience.

Thank God I’m wrong so often.

Yeah, I don’t suppose I’ll ever shed my cocky game-playing attitude, the one that works crosswords in pen and confidently makes blind stabs at obscure answers, with the utmost belief that I’m right, despite the lack of all supporting evidence. I will always be that person. But I also hope that I will also be that person who occasionally leaps before she looks and finds out along the way that it wasn’t such a great idea. Because it seems to me I learn a lot more, laugh a lot more and like life a lot more when I’m proven wrong along the way.

There you have it, then. My two-word theme for the year: Be wrong. I think it’s a brilliant theme.

Sure hope I’m right.