You drink the Kool-aid (or more likely, the breast milk,
during late night confusion, curiosity, or flat-out craziness) and participate in intensely
reverent conversations about diaper brands and growth statistics with people
who you would never have chosen to socialize with if not for being VIP members
of the same club.
Is it rewarding? Of course it is. (At some point in the
future, after the age of three.) But people recruiting parenting converts very
rarely start their pitch with a promise that you'll get poop on your hands and
feel ostracized at club meetings (also known as play groups and/or the seventh circle of hell). If there was a glossy
brochure, the promise that you'll smell faintly of vomit for several months
wouldn't be in the member benefits section.
But eventually, sometime soon after preschool, you stagger
out of the early childhood fundamentalist cult. Maybe you put on your least
dorky clothes and venture out in an attempt to reconcile the old you with the new you. Perhaps, like Kimmy Schmidt,
you end up in a nightclub where someone asks if you like Molly and you
enthusiastically answer: "Do I?! She's my favorite
American Girl doll!"
You set out to find yourself. You seek out friends of
your choosing. You figure out that Molly is a drug and wish you could take some to
forget the cringe you feel when reliving your social gaffes. You are unbreakable.
As a member of the Netflix Stream Team, I was fortunate
enough to get an advanced screening of Tina Fey's new show, Unbreakable Kimmy
Schmidt. (Yes, I'm bragging. It even had my name watermarked over it -- I know
that's so I couldn't illegally distribute it but it still felt super glamorous
and fancy pants to me.)
During the first episode I laughed while inwardly cringing at what seemed like over-the-top ridiculousness and the naïveté of Kimmy
Schmidt. I particularly love Jane Krakowski's character, a posh mediocre mom who at one
point told her son, "Actually, Buckley this is not your worst birthday
ever. Your worst birthday ever was when you busted my genitals."
But the more I watched, the more I sensed a side of Kimmy
Schmidt that I could relate to: the one struggling to discover who she is while trying
to recover from the adversities of daily life; the one promising herself that
she could do anything for 10 seconds. She is silly and absurd and sweet and awkward
and resilient. Like you and me.
But I hope you don't wear light-up shoes like she does.
To celebrate the show's arrival on Netflix tomorrow, I'm
hosting a giveaway and I swear it's not a ruse to hear your funniest, cringiest,
deepest, darkest, sweetest secrets. But in exchange for your funniest,
cringiest, deepest, darkest, sweetest secrets, one of you is going to win one
year of free Netflix.
So leave a comment here about your unbreakable moment. Feel free to take creative liberty with
what that means -- the winner will be chosen at random so I'm not looking for
the next Hemingway of short stories.
For example, one of mine would be:
Due to an odd reaction to drugs, I thought I was on a boat
during one of my labors and tried (hard) to trade my soon-to-be baby to a nurse
in exchange for safe and immediate passage back to unmoving land. No deal. #Unbreakable
#KimmySchmidt
Just like Kimmy Schmidt, I've been taking life 10 seconds at
a time for the last 12 years or so. Maybe more, but I can barely remember what
the old me was like and maybe that's a good thing because the new me is really growing on me. So, join
me in sharing your unbreakable tales and definitely watch Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt on Netflix
starting March 6th.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
You have to watch at least three episodes because I said so. It's not a condition of the contest or anything, it would just be great if someone would listen to me for once.
