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My brain needs a leash.
Feb. 23rd, 2008 02:29 pmThe background: My mom, who is awesome, takes my sisters and I to a spa for a long weekend every February. The first time we went was the year after my dad died. Mom was just starting to put her life back together; one of my sisters was in the middle of a messy divorce, another one was pregnant, another had just gotten married, and I was stressed out planning my wedding. Mom decided we could all use a few days off being pampered, and put this trip together. We had so much fun we've been doing it every year since, and it's one of the high points of my year.
So anyway, we always go to the same place, and we've been going for long enough that we've gotten to know several of the massage therapists. There are a few male massage therapists who we always ask for, since they have such marvelously big, strong hands, plus they're just very sweet, talented guys. Last week, I'm there getting a massage from one of these guys, having seen a different one the previous day. Both are unbelievably good at what they do, but they have vastly different styles, and I found myself wondering if they ever give massages to each other, to observe each others' techniques. Which then led me to think, "Hmm... they're both good-looking guys... that could get *interesting.*" And then I had to derail that train of thought pronto, because OMG I WAS SLASHING THE MASSAGE THERAPISTS, which was just WRONG.
Not 24 hours later, I'm having lunch with my mom and sisters, and one sister is telling us about a cool assignment her 10-year-old son had in school: he had to read at least two books from a selected list, then pick a character from each book and write a story in which those characters had to solve a problem together. He was supposed to really think about each characters's traits, and how they talk/think/act, and how they'd interact with this other character from a different book. And I very nearly blurted out, "He was told to write fan-fiction!" Literally, I caught myself about two words into the sentence, realizing as I spoke how very, very bad it would be to introduce this concept to my family.
Honestly, I do think it's a really cool assignment, and it IS fan-fiction, and would provide great fodder for a discussion of how stuff like this can fuel one's creativity and get one thinking in new ways about received texts, yadda yadda yadda. But that's not a conversation I EVER want to have with my family.
File these under: Ways fandom has warped my brain, parts 94 and 95.
So anyway, we always go to the same place, and we've been going for long enough that we've gotten to know several of the massage therapists. There are a few male massage therapists who we always ask for, since they have such marvelously big, strong hands, plus they're just very sweet, talented guys. Last week, I'm there getting a massage from one of these guys, having seen a different one the previous day. Both are unbelievably good at what they do, but they have vastly different styles, and I found myself wondering if they ever give massages to each other, to observe each others' techniques. Which then led me to think, "Hmm... they're both good-looking guys... that could get *interesting.*" And then I had to derail that train of thought pronto, because OMG I WAS SLASHING THE MASSAGE THERAPISTS, which was just WRONG.
Not 24 hours later, I'm having lunch with my mom and sisters, and one sister is telling us about a cool assignment her 10-year-old son had in school: he had to read at least two books from a selected list, then pick a character from each book and write a story in which those characters had to solve a problem together. He was supposed to really think about each characters's traits, and how they talk/think/act, and how they'd interact with this other character from a different book. And I very nearly blurted out, "He was told to write fan-fiction!" Literally, I caught myself about two words into the sentence, realizing as I spoke how very, very bad it would be to introduce this concept to my family.
Honestly, I do think it's a really cool assignment, and it IS fan-fiction, and would provide great fodder for a discussion of how stuff like this can fuel one's creativity and get one thinking in new ways about received texts, yadda yadda yadda. But that's not a conversation I EVER want to have with my family.
File these under: Ways fandom has warped my brain, parts 94 and 95.
