Public Humiliation/Love

My little sister is about three weeks away from her high school graduation. As one of her last school projects she needed someone to write a biography about her. She made the mistake of asking me. I wrote the following, and even worse am now posting it on here. Oh, and I shot the above photo of my sister in Charleston...doing the Beatles southern style! 

Biography of Megan

In the course of human history there occasionally comes a voice so great calling above the masses that it demands the attention of all who are not deaf or dead. Megan Elizabeth Bedell is that really loud voice.

As chronicler of her journey for this one to two page biography for the narcissistic sounding “Book of Me” I do identify myself as her brother, the lowly peasant Daniel Mark Bedell. The burden has been cast upon me tell the story of her ENTIRE life in less space than I would use to tell the story of the Oklahoma Thunder defeating the Los Angeles Lakers.

Let me start at the beginning. And by the beginning I mean start at a place that maybe uncomfortably early in the story.

Once upon a time there was a tumor type growth somewhere in my mommy’s baby making system. Mommy had surgery to remove this. References were made to this tumor thing being the size of a grapefruit. Looking back at the tale, I am disgusted. After this was removed mommy and daddy tried to make a baby. At the time I think I believed this involved a catalog and lots of stamps. It did not. A Megan was born. Place: Columbia, Maryland. The year of our lord, 1991…I think. End of part 1.

Part 2.

The family moved to Florida, in part because that bundle of joy called Megan was sucking up all the family resources. In Florida she grew hair. It was very light in color. End of part 2.

Part 3.

The Megan thing began to talk, the great voice was born. The voice projected from every corner of the hamlet of Avon Park, Florida. It decreed that it wanted to watch Barney, it declared that it should be given the same rights as the much older and wiser prince of the house Daniel. It declared A LOT of things, much of which centered around entering the castle of the prince and consuming sugar in any and every form.

The Megan decided she liked cooking. She was given an Easy Bake oven. Family members died, it was tragic. She never cleaned up, that was also tragic. The Megan was naked a lot. The Megan made car rides of over 30 minutes a little sliver of hell. End of part 3.

Part 4, Megan develops a heart.

Eventually, the Megan thing became a Megan. She found the joys of finding shared humor in the follies and quirks of her parents and moments of laughing were shared with the prince of the house. She continued to never eat an entire plate of food. And by never I mean, never, ever, ever and forever. But, on the upside her cooking began to taste lovely and lost it’s deadly killing power. Her cleaning skills still lacked.

Megan began playing basketball, piano, clarinet, liking boys, clothing herself after bathing and reading copious amounts of Baby Sitters Club books. She started being interested in her Hungarian ancestry, she decided she wanted to run, and then that she didn’t want to run. She developed a disturbing love of Johnny Depp and Michelle Kwan. She learned how to drive. She started wearing makeup that wasn’t made in conjunction with a cartoon character. In short, she became less of a girl and more of a woman.

Now she sits on the cusp of making the full transition. High school graduation is a breath away and it won’t be long before college is come and gone and a career or sugar daddy will have to be found. But, this Megan has shown herself to be strong in spirit, in will and in body and will come out fighting loud and proud.

Much of her story I’ve left out. How she’s become a caring person to those around her. How she has more talent than she knows inside and only needs to find the determination and persistence to extract it. How she is about to make one of the worst weather decisions ever by spending winters in Michigan and summers in Florida. But, truth is I think this is by far the most creative bio that will be written for The Book of Narcissism” and it’s my lunchtime.