Shut the old lady up!

It’s an interesting observation as I get older to realize how many distinct personalities I can fit into one body and still manage to not be deemed a clinical schizophrenic.  Maybe they were always there and there was just too much noise going on outside of my head for me to hear them.  Maybe they have come to live gradually over time, who knows.  All I know is they are there.  One of my particular favorites is the stand up comedian.  She thinks there is no situation that cannot be made better by a joke.  She wears a perpetual grin and can find something funny to say about anything.  Now, not everyone around her thinks she is funny, but she thinks she is and that’s all that really matters.  I have discovered there is a scared little girl who skulks around in the shadows.  She is terrified of the wind and things that go bump in the night.  She still holds firm to the belief that if you pull the covers up to your chin and you don’t let your arms or legs hang out, then nothing can hurt you.  But, she sleeps with the lamp on…just in case.  There’s a mom type in there.  She’s the one who remains cool and calm at the sight of blood spurting from an open wound.  She actually has a sub personality as well.  While she stands there in any given situation looking calm, cool, and collected….never breaking a sweat…..there’s another woman inside of her screaming at the top of her lungs, “oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!  Crap, Crap Crap!   Somebody get in here and take care of this before my head explodes and you have to clean brain matter off the walls!”  We try NEVER to let that woman out.  There is the wife.  Thank Heaven for her or nothing would ever get done.  She is the responsible one who makes sure the bills are paid, the laundry gets done, the house isn’t declared unfit to inhabit, and there are some fruits and vegetables in the fridge.  She loves her husband and makes sure he knows he is the most important thing in her world.  She’s kind of boring, but I couldn’t survive without her.  And of course there is the polite, professional, business woman.  She knows how to schmooze the right people, say the right thing and she can hold her own with her peers.  Always firm, but never offensive…..unless she’s right, she’s knows it, and she can prove it.  Then you better stand back unless you plan to lose a limb.  (I kind of like her too).  Which brings to mind the gun totin’, duck shootin’, fish catchin’, hillbilly.  She doesn’t like makeup and never worries about her hair.  A hat and some good camoflauge is all that is required.  However, every woman has an inner princess as well, who…at times… doesn’t mind so much fixing her hair, putting on some make up, having her nails and toes painted and walking that hypothetical runway.  I don’t care who you are, the princess is always in there.  Sometimes she’s hidden deeper in some people than in others, but trust me, if I have an inner princess, every woman has one.  There’s the farmer who likes to wear a beat up cowboy hat, leather gloves and listen to her IPod at extremely loud volumes while she weeds her potatoes, hoes her corn, and picks the weeds out of the strawberry patch.  She doesn’t even care how ridiculous she looks while she mows her tiny front lawn with her giant tractor lawn mower and forgets that just because she can’t hear other people, doesn’t mean they can’t hear her when she sings out loud with the extremely loud IPod.  Oh, and don’t forget that this woman tends to the chickens and the dogs and the cat and the birds and carries 50 lb bags of animal feed around on her shoulder.  The woman I think I like the most is the eternal 17 year old.  She is no stranger to me.  She has always been there, but most of the time the other women keep her chained up somewhere….until lately.  Maybe it comes with age, I’m not sure, but as time goes by the 17 year old gets stronger and all the others seem to weaken a little.  In my mind the 17 year old is thin, with powerful, shapely legs, arms and firm buttocks.  She has long blonde hair that waves slightly in the breeze whether the wind is blowing or not.  She has no boundaries.  She has no fear.  She is the one responsible for the camping, hiking, exploring, muscle driving adventures.  She is the one who sits on the back of a motorcycle with the wind blowing in her face, hurtling down the highway looking at the back of Jay’s helmet, with nothing between her and the hard asphalt but the machine beneath her and the clothes covering her.  She is the one who rides through the streets of town in her ATV wearing a t shirt that says, “the police don’t think this is as funny as I do” on the back of it.  There are no restraints and there is that always present sense of danger that keeps the adrenaline pumping through her veins.  In the past we all tried to ignore her.  She was irrational, irresponsible, careless, crazy, unreliable.  But as the other women tend to age, she never does.  Now, to every ying there is a yang and there is one personality that rules all the others.  She is the old lady.  She is the hoarse, gravelly voice that screeches, “get off that motorcycle you idiot.  Are you trying to kill yourself?  You can’t ride a motorcycle.  You are too old.”  She loves to point out how my feet and knees hurt when I’m trying to hike.  She loves to tell me that I need to go to the bathroom in the middle of a good movie, and usually at the most critical place in the story.  She blurs my vision so I can’t read the small print and sets my nerves on edge when there are a lot of people around.  She gives me heartburn when I eat raw onions and laughs when I stumble and trip over a crack in the sidewalk.  She is an evil old hag who is the only one who seems to compete with the 17 year old. Sometimes people look at me and I seem to be staring off in to space, unaware of my surroundings.  The truth is, I have all these people inside of me, all talking at the same time and I am trying to figure out which one I should listen to.  At least I never get lonely.  I don't have a problem with them all being in there.  Sometimes it feels crowded and frustrating trying to figure out who I am, but..... I have a request of all the personalities inside of me.  I beg you all to get together and in one combined effort, please, please, please……SHUT THE OLD LADY UP!

I