Debunking the Myths

In junior high, I thought I debunked a lot of myths.

I realized that fairy tale romances simply don't happen in real life. I discovered that you got in trouble for doing bad stuff, and didn't often get recognized for doing good stuff. And I figured out that it wasn't true that I could become President of the Unites States if I set my mind to it.

No big event turned me from a trusting little girl into a world-weary teenager, unless you count my thirteenth birthday. I just made some small observations, and they led me to bigger observations. My mother was actually quite pleased that I was growing up into a more discerning kid.

I wasn't mad for long about the platitudes I had been fed as a child. I figured that they were like the Santa Claus story, comforting banalities to be outgrown eventually, when the believer was ready to accept the harsher realities of adulthood. As I matured, I took great pleasure in finding cynical interpretations of everything I encountered, becoming very much the typical know-it-all adolescent.

I spent my twenties engaged in hard work and harder play. Getting along in the adult world was a struggle that took all my prodigious energy. Nothing could have been of less use to me than a bunch of outdated clichés.

I would never have admitted it then, but the biggest cliché of all turned me back around: the love of a good man. I fell in love with a man I'd been friends with for a few years, and he fell in love with me. I'd heard that when I met The One I would Just Know. I was amazed and amused to find that this was true. The infatuation didn't wear off, and years after we married, I began to think that sometimes fairy tale romances do come true.

Somehow, my mind had remained open under all those years of cynicism and I began to examine the other myths I'd discarded so long before.