My Fifteen Minutes

If I have bored you with this subject already, just skip today's blog. On the other hand, if you find this interesting, keep reading even if it's the same old same old. Lacking a third hand I shall plow forward. I was just reading my fake boyfriend's blog. The subject matter stirred up memories of having participated in a community theater production over twenty years ago. From my first memories, it seems that I have always indulged in one creative endeavor or another ranging from serving up mud pie banquets, doing my best Patsy Cline impersonation at age five or so for my dolls neatly lined up on the basement steps to writing and performing in a local makeshift musical/comedy troupe which I cofounded called The Wild Women in the Kitchen. We even have a banner which is currently proudly on display in my garage. I have a costuming credit on an extremely limited edition DVD of a play that was performed one time to an audience of dozens in Rapid City. In May of 2002 Michael Feldman spoke to me when I attended his Whad'ya Know Quiz show. My photo appeared on the front page of the Sioux Falls Argus Leader a very long time ago. The photo was snapped at the Sunday on the Grass Arts Festival in Sioux Falls of me and a little girl upon whose face I was painting a large and colorful butterfly. By anyone's reckoning, even one who possesses dubious math skills, I have used up three, maybe four minutes of my allotted fifteen. It would be my preference to use up my remaining eleven or twelve minutes of fame when one of my published novels is chosen by Oprah for her book club. Preferably while I'm still living. And mildly telegenic. When one uses up their fifteen minutes, are they then obliged to die immediately? Or merely fade into obscurity? Or do you get more if you're deserving? Some hang in there at fourteen minutes and forty-eight seconds much too long for anyone to care any more. I would hope that I would gracefully retire from the public limelight once I have used up ten or eleven of my personal minutes of fame. Then emerge later when I have accomplished something deserving of the remaining time. It would be fun to reserve that final thirty seconds of fame for some kind of absorbing posthumous scandal that would surface a year or so after my passing. What would make that perfect would be if I get to watch it play out.