Hairbrush Microphone

When I was a kid, I spent hours each day in front of the full-length mirror that was attached to my closet door.  I turned my little boom box up full blast and became Janet Jackson or Mariah Carey or Selena. At school and on the block I was a skinny, frizzy-haired ‘goody-goody’ who fit every nerdy stereotype imaginable. I even willingly wore plaid skirts, knee-high stockings, penny loafers, and a beret – an actual beret – to school most days. But as soon as class had ended, I hurriedly skipped back home, absconded to my claustrophobic room with the peeling floral wallpaper and circa 1970s shag carpet, shed my schoolgirl getup and became a diva. In the womblike safety of my bedroom I could be sex. I could be style. I could be success. I could be everything I wasn’t. I had scores of stuffed animals who sat enthralled through hours of impassioned singing (or lip-synching, when my parents were home) and showered me with shouts of adulation.

 Nowadays, it seems there are scarcely enough idle minutes, let alone hours, for me to spend daydreaming. But when I’m late to that thing I have to attend, to that place where my domineering adulthood requires me to be, it’s usually because I’ve stolen away to that little room again, that delightful world of my infancy. I unremorsefully miss your important phone call or fail to respond punctually to your urgent email because one hand is holding a hairbrush microphone and the other is sending kisses floating off into an imaginary crowd.