Say goodnight gracie

In my mind I am a mere wisp of a girl. A gamine continental hipster. I am Audrey Hepburn without the aging love interest.**

Except I am not.

I will preface this story by saying that the game "Guitar Hero" was installed in the conference room across from my desk two weeks ago. On a Friday. After a long week. My inner rock star, who is a wispy, gamine hipster, but decidedly more NY than EU, was so excited by the prospect of playing along with Poison "Talk Dirty To Me" that she ran into the conference room when it was her turn to play. Only she/I didn't run into the conference room itself, but rather the glass wall next to the conference room doorway.

With my nose.

As my mom said, while laughing, "You have been running into walls your entire life." And it is true. What I like to think of as living exuberantly, perhaps isn't the BEST way to live, especially when dealing with glass walls, potato peelers, hot oven racks and sharp knives. I know scars are supposed to tell one's life story, but my book is getting long and isn't that exciting. The scar from touching a hot pan isn't nearly as cool as a scar from, say, wrestling a bear.

There really isn't any solution to this. I wasn't a gamine girl even at my tiniest, and I would much rather jump-rope in platform Prada's, causing a huge, and still painful scar on the top of my foot, than cheer from the sidelines. That is the way this dual-continent, aging hipster apparently wants to roll. And if there were any doubts that I won't learn anything from the glass wall incident, let me assure you that, after the nose swelling went down and my coworkers stopped laughing, I walked into the conference room and made it through Sonic Youth's "Kool Thing" on the first try. I even worked in a totally rocking kick mid-way through without falling down or hitting myself in the head with the guitar. Nice! I am a guitar hero indeed.

** Even a skinny-man aficionado such as myself is disturbed by the bandanna on a greyhound imagery brought on by Fred Astaire's jaunty red scarf knotted on one side.