Lynnette

Most of you out there in the Bloggernaccle probably know and love Lynnette. Of the rest, half of you just don’t know her half as well as you would like, and she likes less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

However, I enjoy the distinction of having known Lynnette for longer than most of you, and loved her for at least sixty percent of that time. So, on the occasion of her birthday, allow me to tell you fourteen completely true things you might not have known about Lynnette:

1. Lynnette was born during Happy Hour. I mean, it was Happy Hour somewhere. Maybe even there. The point is, a number of people were happy. (I was not among them, because I wasn’t born yet.)

2. These are several things Lynnette really loves: big charts; naps; chocolate; donuts; trashy tv; feminism; theology; kittens; Fresca; steak; hiking; Aragorn.

3. Lynnette used to terrorize mine and Amalthea’s stuffed animals. She threatened to make “bare bear stew” out of my beloved teddy bear, and “Pongo bars” out of Amalthea’s Dalmatian Pound Puppy. She would stick them in the microwave, put them in pots, throw them on the roof, and have long arguments with us about whether they were alive or not.

4. Lynnette and Kiskilili watched The Return of the Jedi every day after school for something like forty-seven days in a row. As a consequence, they could, and did, re-enact whole scenes with near-religious solemnity. In fact, scratch that “near.” I’m pretty sure Lynnette was converted to Star Wars long before she was converted to anything else.

5. Lynnette has a paralyzing fear of stuffed rats. If you give her a stuffed rat for Christmas, she’ll give it back. It’s very rude.

6. Lynnette once had a pet wolf spider named Kloof.

7. When she was fourteen, Lynnette took charge of the family. It was one of those jokes that’s not really a joke, because actually, she made a pretty good benevolent dictator from a pretty young age. She made up elaborate games for everyone to play in the backyard, chaired all of the long and intense sibling meetings about important topics like where to put the Christmas tree, and awarded us all the moons of Jupiter for doing our chores. But if you got on her bad side, she would actually not speak to you for the amount of time she had told she wasn’t speaking to you, and also not let you play with her hamsters. She is still, as the existence of this blog attests, in charge.

8. Lynnette has six fingers on her left hand, and she killed your father.

9. Lynnette was political early on. During the 1992 Clinton/Bush elections, she posted signs all around the house encouraging our parents to vote for her preferred candidate, since she wasn’t eighteen yet.

10. Lynnette has a special set of Canadian grandparents that no one else in the family has.

11. When I was twelve or so, Lynnette told me that she was so righteous she would have already been translated, excepted she needed to be around to set an example for me. She assured me that as soon as I turned eighteen, she was going to get twinkled right in front of me and my birthday cake. That this did not happen is, we can assume, a reflection of my ever-increasing wickedness, rather than her failure to maintain translation-worthy standards of righteousness.

12. Lynnette is more machine than man, now. Twisted and evil.

13. Lynnette claims not to like comedies, because she doesn’t like things that are trying to make you laugh. Despite this, she enjoys Parks and Recreation, What About Bob, MASH, Monty Python, Modern Family, and Troll 2. She won’t watch Zoolander, though, so there may be something to this claim.

14. Everywhere Lynnette walks, little flowers spring up. These flowers have bacon-flavored petals and are delicious on salads.