The Wordmanizer & Her Six-Word Life

Words are easy for me. Like a spray-tanned stud prancing into a bar, I prey on some words like he fearlessly, perhaps shamelessly, starts collecting digits from a sea of ready-to-be-loved ladies. You know you want me, words. Don’t fight it. No. I don’t have a girlfriend. I just let my mom keep some of her bras at my place.Will I still love you tomorrow? Meh, I’ll be on to greener posts by daybreak.

Hey girl heyyyyy.

So it is not a burdensome chore to court a wordy piece. Just the opposite, it is simple, like breathing… or convincing a tipsy girl that you are a televangelist/doctor despite those questionable prison tats peeking out from under your sleazy sleeve.

Surprisingly, it is a seemingly basic task involving words which leaves me breathless, dateless, and feeling like this player just got played.

Smith Mag kicked off a genius project to strip the daunting job of writing a memoir down to the bones. The concept of Six-Word Memoirs is as simple as it is self-explanatory: Tell your life story in just six words. No lengthy chapters, tedious structuring, or chronological flow. Just write. Six words. Your story.

I sat down with a pen and a helpful hand ready to count on fingers the six words my head is incapable of calculating. I squinted one eye, twitched the opposite brow, and wiggled the tip of my nose, my thinking face. My brain flipped through its hefty black book, trolling for which fine, young words to holler at on this steamy Wednesday night. I could call Ambidextrous, but she’s kind of a show off. Or maybe Dance-tastic? She’s fun AND double-jointed. 

This disturbing internal dialogue continued through various adjectives under and over verbs and into nouns. With only six to choose, how could this wordmanizer make up her mind? It was asking Charlie Sheen to pick a single goddess, knowing full well that goddesses can only goddessize in numbers.

I started scribbling and failing woefully the task of counting from one to six.

About that time I gave birth:

Push. Ring of Fire. Please don’t use those scissors. (niner)

The most fun the world can offer. (Seven and ripped off from my sister)

About my Southern heritage:

Mo’ butter. Mo’ butter. Mo’ butter.(Six! Six but sucking)

Dumber than dirt. Bless her heart.

Oh! Or maybe my very first date?:

Lip Smackers, your braces are cruel. 

Love is gross and mostly slobbery. 

This is easy! My memoir should most certainly involve my lengthy history of inappropriate emotional responses:

In a funeral procession, she’s dancing. 

Lady tumbles. Help? Nervous Laugh.

This is hard. I begged for help from my lovingly unenthusiastic partner:

The bloom fell off the rose?

Please, I don’t want to play.

And then I got it. The perfect, six-word description of my life. It’s genuine, from the heart (and maybe gut), and exactly how I suspect folks will remember me:

[Toot] I always didn’t do it. 

Thankfully, I’m back to not tooting, not limiting myself to the late-night slim pickings left ’round the bar, and not caring that a six-word post morphed into six-hundred.

How would your six-word memoir read?

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