A while back, WordPress posted a video to explain why some blogs aren’t successful. The video consisted of one word over and over: ME ME ME.

Thinking back over my posts for the past year, I thought, Uh-oh.

I’ve been working under the assumption that I should write what I know, which happens to be me.

WordPress has also been posting ideas for topics, one a day. So I checked those out.

They include the following:

• Describe the worst teacher you ever had.
• Are you an optimist or a pessimist?
• What is your favorite sound?
• How do you define a friend?
• How do you stay focused?
• Describe the most trouble you’ve been in.
• What part of life confuses you the most?

Those are ME topics.

Although I appreciate WP’s  assistance, they’re also not ones I want to tackle.

I did the friend one in eighth grade (UIL ready-writing contest at the school in Martindale).

I’m a pessimist, I don’t stay focused, and I’m confused by many things simultaneously.

I don’t have a worst teacher (except the one who was too busy leering to teach).

I don’t have a favorite sound (Scott Joplin’s “Bethena,” Chopin’s “Valse in C-sharp minor” from Les Sylphides, and Kiri Te Kanawa singing “O Mio Babbino Caro” are tied right now).

And I do not intend to tell anyone about the worst trouble I’ve been in.

But I will tell about a time I was in trouble. I was four years old, and my friend Helen Ruth and I were going somewhere with my mother. Mother was dressed up so our destination must have been of some consequence. We were probably in a hurry.

We drove downtown and stopped at the store. Mother was standing at the counter, talking to Rob and Nell (the owner-proprietors, as well as my second set of parents), when Helen Ruth and I yielded to impulse and began a wild rumpus.

(It must have been a very tiny wild rumpus or I wouldn’t have lived to the age of five.)

Anyway, we made a lap around the store and ended up in produce, right at the stalk of bananas that hung from the ceiling. Without a word, not a hint of conspiracy, each of us took hold of a low-hanging banana and pulled it from the stalk.

I still marvel at the precision of our timing.

Mother said what mothers say under such circumstances and opened her purse to pay for the bananas. Rob said, No, no, those girls can have the bananas.

We might have had time to say Thank you before Mother hustled us out.

All this happened a long time ago. Helen Ruth has probably forgotten it by now.

If I hadn’t been born feeling guilty, I’d have forgotten it by now.

There is no point to the story.

I’m watching Seinfeld as I write, and it occurs to me that if he can write about nothing, so can I.

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Image of bananas by Mschel (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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