I'm one of billions who will never have fifteen, five or even one minute of fame; never get my name, Miriam Teresa Morrison, into Time magazine, never mind my ageing face on the cover! As hard and as relentless as I may scratch around for some crumb of content on which to base my fame, not one iota stands the test of Time. What? Will my claim to fame be that once I had an extraordinary out-of-the-body, transcendental, three day experience of what it's like to be God? Hardly. How can I compete with perhaps thousands of dedicated religious followers - monks, nuns, priests of various religions - whose every waking and sleeping moment is focused on the pursuit of their God? Especially when my friend, Marcia, tells me that her architect buddy had exactly the same experience as he was walking along a road. Well, that puts the cap on it! Just think! He didn't have to wait twenty-one years to find a Cappucine monk with the stigmata. No, he just hummed a tune, and, with his hands in his pockets, strolled along a busy street and hey presto! He was in God, immersed in Being Itself, transcendent, immanent, eternal. Ah well, it seems 'my' experience isn't worth a mention, so let's tuck that one away and advise everyone to pay attention the next time they're shopping at a mall. You just never know when enlightenment may strike! No, I'm doomed not to be plucked out of insignificance-my wrinkled face blazing on international newspapers and with Twitter all a flutter because of me. I can't understand Twitter anyway. I joined it - one night when I was desperately desolate - and then back-peddled furiously when Twitter appeared in my in-box as it scares the unnecessary accumulated food fragments out of me. Which has its advantage, especially if you're sixty-seven and constipated. Which of course I'm not. Not always.
Ah no, who on this over-populated earth could ever relate to my innocuous life? Who plucks their eyebrows first thing in the morning with their eyes shut? Do you have any idea of the amount of courage it takes to lift up that mirror - the side where everything is enlarged - and see the little hairs that sprung up in the night, unmistakably present, taking residence in my face? Ah, the pity of it, Horatio! To face that face makes my nights a terror. How can one person produce such a surfeit of new growth in such a short time? And I'm a woman, mind you. Not a man. A man's face grows, yes. But my little round and chubby disc? A tragedy, indeed. It's not only the eyebrows and the upper lip, it's the chin, nogal. I die a thousand times as I wake. Which reminds me that when I die those hairs will not cease. Nay. They will cluster round my face, proliferating to such an extent that no semblance of humanity will remain. I will be werewolf extraodinaire! Now that might be worth a cover of Time magazine. Regrettably I shall not live to see it.
Alas, there's nothing I can think of that makes me stand out in a crowd. I lost my hour-glass figure in my late forties as my rounding tummy and thickening thighs made their appearance. To my utter disgust. How dared pertly dressed, younger women - and there were a plague of them - pitter-patter past me in their brand new stilettos not even gracing me with a withering glance? Studiously they ignored the overweight woman with blotches of black receding hair as an encroaching army of bristling white ones burst onto my scalp. Two-toned Teresa was not a pretty sight. I surrendered, sure that no man would ever look at me again unless I paid him, and even then, he'd have to consider carefully. That is, until a 91 year old rabbi fell madly in love with me. I had to put a stop to his wads of love poems as his 92 year old wife got wind of his aberrant behavior and emailed a picture of me in a geisha-girl outfit to every member of the congregation. She declared I was persona non grata as I couldn't possibly be a Jew and a Geisha girl at the same time. She underestimated me. Regrettably her story couldn't hold water, but there was an upside to this attempt to darken my aura. I received at least fifty calls from women who wanted me to share the intimate details of my skill as a geisha girl and a long line of men discovered my address and stood patiently outside my apartment hoping for a few demonstrations.
