Jane and Me, Kindred Spirits

My friend had an epiphany about me the other day. As we rode in chummy conversation to an outing at the park with a bunch of other people our age, she began talking about a conversation she had with other friend recently. Armenia (the friend in the car, whose name obviously isn't Armenia, but it's what she talks about the most, so it seems a fitting blogonym) and Shummy (who refers to herself as Shummy and has called me K-VAN for as long as I can remember, because "It sounds so cool -- like the call sign for a radio station or something") spent long hours mulling over what book characters they most resemble. Armenia concluded she quite resembled Lizzy Bennet, while Shummy remains steadfastly certain she bears a distinct resemblance to Anne Shirley. (Despite, sadly, a lack of red hair--but she still shares a certain element of feistiness with the girl of Green Gables)

Armenia, in the course of the conversation, glanced at me. She admitted that they had tried to determine which book character I most resembled, but had suffered a dearth of adequate characters. Then, she suddenly exclaimed that she had a revelation: I was not a book character at all! Whereas she was definitely Lizzy Bennet and Shummy was, without question, Anne, I was Jane Austen, who knew how to sneakily and somewhat profitably make fun of every class of the society that I lived in. I take this as a sincere compliment, especially because I know she meant it to be. Still, I won't mention what I said when she asked why I hadn't written a novel . . . if you saw my every workday, you would know that it wasn't from a lack of things to mock; rather, it comes from a lack of oomph. Not motivation, oomph. They're quite different.

And oddly enough, my co-worker the financial analyst decided today that I was funny, but he couldn't express in words exactly what type of humor I employ. "It's biting," he said, "but in a genteel way. You could probably mock most people to their faces and they wouldn't realize it until some time much later. Lots of people probably wouldn't even realize it." He doesn't know it, but he more or less called me Jane Austen.

This ego boost will help me to float through at least two more workdays.