My father has been telling me for years to write down stories. Stories of me; not of some fantastical creature, or some princess wasting away in a tower waiting for someone to save her. Me, (or I, sorry Mrs. Robinson), I always found a quaint bit boring, a little frightening for sure- the amount I talk to myself would garner a raised eyebrow from any psychologist who met me-but at the end of the day, sort of ordinary. Raised well, fed well, not abused or mismanaged. Yet, from all of that came me, sort of kind of, blink, jump on one foot and sneeze, unhinged.
Actually, my father wants me to write these things down so I can become a vastly successful writer who can afford to put him on a never ending around the world cruise. But semantics of course. He really does just want me to succeed. Also, he’s really over listening to me tell the same stories over and over again.
So me. Kennis. Yes. It rhymes with tennis. And Dennis. And menace. I know. I’ve known for a very long time. Somewhere in the very beginning of my freshman year of college I grew to introducing myself as “Kennis, like tennis but with a ‘k’”. It worked, to some extent, though Starbucks still managed to screw it up in new and imaginative ways. Kenneth and Kennyce were always my favorite. Dear Barista, how the hell do you spell tennis?
That’s how I’m going to decide my children’s names in the future. By how badly Starbucks screws them up. I always thought Emma was safe until one day I went with a friend with that name and she came out of the Starbucks name manipulator with Ima. We’ve never truly figured that one out. Another friend, Alexa, has had the pleasure of being named Alaska by the powers-that-screw-up-every-name-ever-and-one-white-chocolate-mocha. Thus, when it comes time to start naming children, I’m just going to start Starbucks hopping until I’ve come out with a name that’s Starbucks Proof. It may end up being, Mary, but whatever, if it was good enough for God, it’ll be good enough for me.
But screwing up names aside, "Kennis" has served me well. Not really, sort of. Let's just say that it's an odd set of circumstances that lead to me.
First off, I have this wild hair. Srsly. It's huge and has a mind of it's own and sometimes I think I may have the answers to anti-gravity technology on earth hidden somewhere in the confines of it. Also, it doesn't like me. Curly hair. Anyone who has curly hair is now shuddering in sympathy. I also live in Florida. So more despair. Also, I didn't know what a diffuser was, hairspray, or moose until my senior year of high school. So basically, I have a plethora of "before" pictures, and I'm really not sure if I'm ever going to get to the after.
When I was, like, seven, my mother had enough of the beast that grew out of my head so she cut it all of. I mean all of it. Gone. Not that I had a buzz cut, but it was like the curly hair equivalent. Now as anyone with the Hair of Death knows, the shorter it gets the bigger it gets, telling physics to suck it, and most likely breaking at least two laws of thermodynamics. So there I was, young, unaware, and suddenly hit with a triangular fro that would take me six years to grow out. My third grade school picture is dreadful. It literally looks like Pythagoras is my home boy.
To add to it, I somehow ended up with a large red dot in the center of my nose. Not a pimple of anything, but some spot of sun that had zoomed in on my face and dubbed me the new Rudolph. Third grade is also when I lost my first (yes first, what can I say, I'm special) tooth. So bam! Rudolph nose, no tooth to the middle of the front, and a triangular fro that stopped just below my ears. Honestly, it's a work of art. Dali would be proud. I could have been Dali's muse. He'd of loved me.
When I was little, some representative from a doll company actually approached my mother about them using my face as the face of a new doll. She almost said yes but my dad was like, "um no, that's creepy." I agree. Mostly because I feel like I would have been the doll that's always featured in B rated horror films right before the black guy gets killed.
and that would not have been cool.
