Q & A With P. Donkey

Let the fireworks begin!

I have a new award to add to my collection. It joins my prize from the Red Cross for a picture I drew in Grade 3, and the lapel pin I received as yearbook editor in Grade 12. I thought I had accomplished more than that so far in life, and I'm giving myself frown lines trying to remember anything else I've received as recognition, but that's all I can come up with.

Until now, that is. I have been nominated for the Mystery Blogger award by baili, a lovely lady from Pakistan who writes at her thoughtful and interesting spot in the blogospere called Baili And I, which you can find HERE. Thank you, baili! I enjoyed reading your answers to the award questions, and I'm happy to take part, albeit in my donkey-ish, stubbornly different way.

 

The Mystery Blogger award was created by Okoto Enigma (found HERE), a young fashion blogger. She wanted a way to introduce lots of people to lots of other people in blogland, because she felt there were so many good blogs out there that were not being discovered. I think it is a worthy goal, but I also think that many bloggers have already found that they discover new blogs through the comments on the blogs they currently read, and then discover more blogs through the comments on those blogs, and so on, branching out and out and out ... until they get to a maximum of blogs they can comfortably read and respond to on a regular basis.

Therefore, I am going to take the liberty of not following all of the rules, although I will post them here for the record:
1. Put the award/image on your blog.
2. List the rules.
3. Thank whoever nominated you and provide a link to their blog.
4. Also mention the creator of the award and provide a link.
5. Tell your readers three things about yourself.
6. Nominate 10-20 other bloggers for the award.
7. Let them know with a comment on their blog.
8. Ask your nominees 5 questions, with one being weird or funny.
9. Share a link to your best post.

Whew! That's a lot of things to do.

But I've already done 1 through 4.

Onward to number 5 - three things about myself.
 
It was a challenge to come up with three things I'm willing to share publicly that I haven't already mentioned at one time or another. For someone who writes under a fake name because I want to stay relatively anonymous, I'm finding myself putting a lot of personal things on my blog. However, one has come to mind that I might not post about in the ordinary course of things.

I have a "thing" for clothing. That sounds the same as "I like fashion" but that's not exactly it. I just like fabric and colours and pretty things. I can clearly remember as a young child looking through the mail-order catalogue and being captivated by the clothing, especially those mix-and-match spreads where you could buy three bottoms and three tops and two jackets and have, I don't know, I'm not great in math, something like 900 different outfits?? And I recall my diary entries as a slightly older child; I had no social life to speak of, so my diary entries were all the same, a description of what I wore, including the colour of my socks. I always wore coordinating clothing, although I can assure you I was no fashion plate. Ah, yes, good times, and really, truly cringe-worthy.

There's more. Not only do I like to look at clothing, I like to look at thrift store clothing in particular. I like to sort through things in bins, never knowing what the next item will be, what it will look like, if it will magically be my size and shape. It's soothing to me to do this. When my dad was in the hospital during his final illness, I spent every afternoon during his rest hour at the thrift store sorting ... sorting ... sorting. I also bought a lot of things with the thought that I would probably soon have time to alter them. The alterations still haven't happened, two years later. Many of those things have been donated to charity. In hindsight, I think of it as my therapy for my impending grief. It wasn't free, but in total it cost only about the same as an hour or two of actual therapy.

In real life (as opposed to my fantasy life where I am slim, beautiful and well-dressed), I usually wear the same few things over and over, because (a) I don't live a lifestyle that requires a big variety of clothing (b) I am a dumpy little thing with wrong proportions and it's hard to find clothing to fit (c) I value comfort highly, and many clothes aren't comfortable, at least for me (see HERE for the reason).

Eek. They say confession is good for the soul, but I'm not sure if I feel all that good right now.

However.

Carrying on.

Bravely, I might add.

Because I'm about to break more of the rules of the award. I am not going to nominate ANY bloggers. But if anyone reading this would like to carry on with the intent of this award, please leave a link to your blog in the comments, or you can just tell us about yourself directly in the comments. Please do consider telling us something quirky so we (me) can feel less alone.

The last thing I'm going to do is answer one of baili's five questions she posed to the bloggers she nominated. I chose the one that made me think hard; I also liked it because there is a bit of the control freak in me that loves this fantasy.

Baili's question was : If you were president of a whole, united world for one week, what changes would you like to make?

My mother and I play this game quite often, to be honest. We'll get talking about the health care system, or the educational system (she was a teacher from the age of 18 until retirement), or the political parties, or some other topic, and discuss it and dissect it for an hour or so, and conclude by saying, "if we could just run the world for ONE DAY!" and laugh together. So I feel uniquely and totally qualified to put in writing what I'd actually do if I ran the world. (Would someone please invent a sarcasm emoticon? I need it right there at the end of that sentence.)

Anyway, here's the Donkey plan.

I'd put most - if not all - of the current leaders of the world in time out. I know, I know - that would take a gigantic naughty step to squeeze them all on, but it would be so worth it. And no desserts for them for the next year, plus extra chores to help put right what they've messed up so far.

Then I'd take all the good and compassionate and smart ordinary people working as scientists, health care workers, teachers of all kinds, religious leaders who have shown good judgement, open minds and critical thinking, people in all different jobs, or none, as long as they had good minds and kind spirits, and all the older folks who have learned life's lessons the hard way, and all the youth who have energy to spare, and all the dreamers and artists and writers who sustain us with beauty and imagination, and I'd put them all in a big room (I know, I know, it would be a gigantic room) and ask them to work together to solve the problems of world overpopulation, hunger, poverty, strife, environmental degradation, and general evil in the world.

Personally, I can make a strong case for the first one of those issues - overpopulation - being the underpinning for most or all of the ones following it, but that's a post for another day.

I really think that without the dual stresses of a rapidly increasing world population plus the jockeying for power that consumes so many people in this world we could solve every problem we've created so far, and a few problems we haven't thought of yet. I do. I have faith in the goodness and intelligence of regular people. And I have faith in removing the bad ones from the discussion. NO INPUT AND NO DESSERTS FOR A YEAR, GUYS.

Have a good weekend, folks.

And, by the way, YOU are the kind of people I'd want in that gigantic room. Together, we could do it

But who's going to listen to a donkey? And why, oh why, is this donkey clean-shaven on the bottom half of his muzzle??

P. S. I'm not going to share a link to my best post because I don't know what constitutes "best" ... is it the most reads? the one I like best? the one with the most comments? So confusing!! Also, this post is already too long :)

Photos courtesy of Pixabay.