"I'm not here for your entertainment..."

[Warning: Rant Ahead]

I've never had the patience to watch "Funny Girl" all the way through. I asked my mom to tell me how it ended one time, and she gave me an ending that turned out to be the ending to "Gone with the Wind." Therefore, as much as I'd like to, I can't make any legitimate allusions to "Funny Girl" with this post.

I am a funny girl (or lady). At some point I developed the ability to make the things in my head turn into things to come out of my mouth in such a way to amuse and fascinate. In many ways, it's a blessing. I've encountered lots of people who are horribly dull, people who cannot appreciate irony or wordplay or subtle nuances that make the delivery of a phrase something a little more special than just parts of speech thrown together to convey meaning.

In other ways, it's a curse. The curse of the "Funny Girl." Whether or not Barbra* ever felt this way would require me to sit through a thousand choruses of "people who need people are the luckiest people in the world" and I don't care to do that, but it's a curse nonetheless. Sometimes I wonder, do people actually hear what I have to say, or are they too busy being amused by my delivery and timing?

While I'm thinking of it, let me tell you something about my delivery and timing [Big Fat Revelation Time]: it's all a miserable accident. I hate speaking. I'm terribly shy, and the feeling of eyes and ears devoted to me does things to my sympathetic nervous system that true love has yet to accomplish. I am not Andy Kaufman reading The Great Gatsby. This presence you speak of is nothing but a poor girl's violent attempt to leave the spotlight as quickly as possible.

Not the point.

I want to stop being the two-dimensional supporting character in somebody else's story, whose sole purpose is comic relief. On the other hand, I don't want to give up my wit! Is being more boring the only way to be more real? How can I change the people in my world from an audience to be entertained to friends to be touched†?

I was hoping that this would be one of those blog posts where I would pose a problem in the beginning and by the end I would have come to an answer. No such luck. I shall continue to be clever and amusing and try to let any hints of depth break through somehow.

*Safari does not recognize this as a legitimate spelling of the name "Barbara." It also said that "Gatsby" was misspelled. What little faith I had in Apple is shaken.

†Metaphorically. Gross.