Balancing a Peter Pan Life with Adult Pet Peeves
I have been referred to as stubborn for most of my life. As a child, I rejected the idea of growing up, and I still do today. Holding onto my childlike imagination has been a lifeline for me, and has pulled me through some really tough times. Being a grown-up means you have to act like an adult and deal with adult matters. Ugh!!
I think that is why the tale of Peter Pan is still one of my favorite stories today. As a child, Peter was my hero: a boy who figured out how not to age. Though I have succumb to the biological act of aging (sorry, Peter!), his is a story of how to challenge the status quo. He stood up to conventional expectations of growing up and being an adult. He, too, was called stubborn.
Peter spits in the eye of growing up, holds onto his childhood antics and imagination, and collects other lost souls who feel like he does. Plus, his best friend is a Pixie! Who didn’t want to fly away to Neverland?
A week ago, we enjoyed a wonderful, long overdue family vacation. My family of 12, six adults and six grandchildren, came from three different states to be together. We rented a lake house, had fun on the water, and made some wonderful memories. When I took out the bubble maker, and my two youngest grandchildren leapt at the fun of popping bubbles, my inner-child came out to play as well. That is called pure joy!
Forgive the cliché, but acting like a child does keep us young at heart. When someone attempts to make me feel silly for my child-like antics or my way-out-there imagination, I don’t feel belittled, I feel sad for them. They were not able to hold on to their youth like Peter Pan, like the Lost Boys, or like me. They have forgotten how fun it is to just let go and not care what other people think. Oh, the bliss of youth!
So, here’s where the balance between a Peter Pan mind-set and my adult Pet Peeves come into play.
Because of the demands of everyday life, sometimes I do have to be an adult. That’s when I put on my grown-up hat and do adult-like activities. When I’m not writing, revising, or editing my most recent MS, I’m frequently doing bookkeeping, just as I have done for the last 25 years as a freelance bookkeeper.
As a bookkeeper, I work with numbers. One of my biggest pet peeves is when the letter O is used in place of the number zero.
I’m sure that this annoyance for me is a direct result of my many years as a bookkeeper, as it doesn’t seem to bother anyone else. If you put a letter in place of a number, well, then you are doing algebra.
And X + Y = Z never made any sense to me. If the algebra teacher wanted me to solve a math problem, he should have used numbers instead of letters. It’s math, man, not English. Duh!
The letter O is not a number. The number zero is not a letter. If you create a password for an online account with the number zero in it, you must use the number zero when typing it in. You cannot replace that character with the letter O. It won’t work. You will get an error message.
Since we all learned the difference between letters and numbers in the 1st grade, will someone please explain to me why soooooo many people will drop in the letter O in place of a zero when reciting a series of numbers?
Maybe it was ingrained into our heads as acceptable at an early age due to marketing. Remember the household cleaner commercial for the product called 409? The jingle was a song that replaced the zero with the letter O. I guess ‘Four-O-Nine’, sounded better than ‘Four-Zero-Nine.’ But still, come on! Even back then, we all knew it was wrong, but it had a catchy tune, so we played along.
And here we are, a society that has no problem in mixing up letters and numbers as if they were interchangeable. (Again, I didn’t get Algebra.)
I know it makes me seem uppity, or extremely anal, but when I hear someone use the letter O when reciting numbers, I will almost always feel the need to correct them. “It’s a zero. The letter O is not a number,” I say aloud, because I can’t keep my damn mouth shut!
Keeping one foot in the world of Peter Pan, and another in the logical world of numbers, is how I am able to have balance in my life. Because the fact is, we need both: sometimes logic and structure, and sometimes a child’s view of the world, full of magic and wonder.
In less than two weeks, I will be combining these two very different and opposite spectrums of my life when I set up my booth at the Washington Midsummer Renaissance Faire in Snohomish, Washington over the weekend of August 17th and 18th,. This will be an opportunity to expose my creative side, the part of me that still lives in that Peter Pan, child-like world, and share my story of MARK OF THE FAERIE. The bookkeeper in me will also be happy by selling a few books and recording a few sales transactions. It’s a win-win!
But the best part of these events is meeting new readers and making new friends, like you!
If you live in northwest Washington, and have never been to a Renaissance Faire, now is the time. If you have been to one of these events, you know how much fun, fantasy, and colorful people are to be found at a renaissance fair. The weekend of August 17th and 18th is the Fantasy and Fairytale themed weekend, and I will be there with stories to tell, books to sell, and beautiful resin artwork as well!
Okay, that was a lame attempt at on-the-fly poetry, but it works. Hubby’s resin art is only sold at fairs, and you can view them here: https://raedianceproductions.com. On this site, you will also find a link to the MARK OF THE FAERIE website, where you can buy books via online sellers.
I will end this newsletter with a heart-full of gratitude to all of you who have supported my craft. Whether it is by purchasing copies of the books in the MARK OF THE FAERIE series, or borrowed a copy from a friend, thank you! To all of those who have written their honest reviews, and have reached out to me and shared their love of this story, I am honored. To hear that you have loved reading the story of Isaboe and Connor, as much as I did writing it, is the greatest joy a storyteller can receive!
It’s looking to be a very hot summer. Stay cool out there!
Patti
Only those who believe in magic will ever find it.
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