Less Lard, More Battle-Axe: Retiring the Adorable Act

“What brought you to L.A.?” she asks, as we scribble in unicorn coloring books at a friend’s kitchen table, the cheers of 49ers fans echoing from a nearby hallway.

I’ve had the same answer for 20 years. I don’t even think about it anymore. The words tumble out of my mouth as mindlessly as the ABCs.

“I was young,” I say. “22. Just naïve enough to think it would be a good idea to buy a one-way ticket to a place I’d never been and try my hand at an industry I knew nothing about.” I roll my eyes, so she knows I know I’m a cliché.

This self-deprecating song and dance is how I make myself small, so everyone will think I’m charming. It almost always works. But today it doesn’t. She stares at me thoughtfully.

“I actually think that’s very brave,” she says.

“Yeah,” I reply, suddenly ashamed of having thrown my younger self under the bus for a cheap laugh. “Yeah it was.”

She’s new to me, this woman. A mother of a boy in my son’s first grade class. Our toddler girls are the same age, too (hence the unicorn coloring books). She’s impossibly cool, or at least that’s the persona I’ve projected onto her based on the very limited information I’ve gleaned thus far. I desperately want her to like me. This is concerning.

At 43, I could’ve sworn I was light years past giving a shit what anybody thought of me. It’s one of the great gifts of midlife. The reservoir of confidence that comes from hard won self-knowledge, self-trust, and lived experience. I’m comfortable in my skin. I have the kind of boundaries I didn’t even think possible in my 20s. I act effortlessly in accordance with my values, rather than in service of making others think or feel a certain way.

So why the hell am a shrugging like a dumb-dumb, undermining my well-considered choices and discrediting my life’s work in order to make this woman think I’m… adorable?

School. It all starts with school.