The Tiara

After a great several-week spurt of good writing, I have totally lamed out over the last week, and written pretty much nothing. It is directly correlated to a mood swing -- though that turns into a chicken or an egg cycle, since the moment I force myself to write, I get into a better mood, so the "I'm cranky and therefore I can't write" excuse isn't such a good one.

But I am going to get some writing done today, I will, I will, I will -- and to help with the cause, I have put on my trusty tiara. Those who know me well, know the tiara. It is left over from my third grade princess costume and it has carried me through years of homework assignments, deadlines, life crises, or --to be honest -- just plain cleaning the house when I don't want to.

Everyone should have a tiara.

Exhibit A:

It is the night before I am supposed to give a talk on my senior physics thesis. I am completely and totally blocked, I can't figure out what I'm supposed to talk about, life sucks. My friend, and fellow physics major, Kent, knocks on my dorm room door at about 7 o'clock, to find me staring at my computer, desperate. He says: "forget this, you need a break" and takes me off to see the movie Jacob's Ladder -- one of the weirdest mind-games movies ever. I get home at 11, with a totally new pretty-close-to-what-I-can-only-imagine-being-tripped-on-acid-feels-like attitude, throw on my tiara, light candles all over my room, and pump that talk out. The tiara comes through.

Exhibit B:

It is the night before my graduate school applications are due -- I think I'm in good shape. I have written all the essays, have gotten all my recommendations, I just need to fill out the information on the basic forms and do a few short answer questions. I discover that one of the applications has a whole extra essay that I had not even realized was needed -- and I certainly haven't started. I panic. I call my friend Jane, who in her most blase tone says: "No problem. You know what to do. Put on the tiara, go get a cup of coffee laced with Baileys, light the candles." I got in to every school.

Exhibit C:

When my friend Catherine was sad one day, she decided she needed to wear the tiara out. Three of us went out for dinner and we all found a tiara to wear -- the waitress looked vaguely askance, but never asked anything about it. Jen finally leaned over and whispered to the waitress "She's a bachelorette" . . . within minutes the whole restaurant knew who the bachelorette was, and we were the most fun table in the place. Everyone sent us drinks, everyone asked the bachelorette to dance. It was awesome. Totally snapped her out of her mood.

Exhibit D:

A few months ago, I came home from lunch having just broken up with the guy I'd been dating -- and I put the tiara on. I was due out at a happy hour that evening, but just couldn't bring myself to take it off. I mean I NEEDED that thing. Here's a funny thing about tiaras -- it turns out that when you walk down the street at 6 on a Friday afternoon in one, nobody even bothers to ask why you're wearing it. Hell, no one even looks twice. I wore it all weekend -- including a drive up to New York City with multiple stops at Jersey Turnpike rest stops. At a brunch on Sunday, one of the female guests brought her pet turtle -- she carried it around, she made kissing noises at it, she showed it to everyone, talked about it incessantly. And all I could think was: "Who needs so much attention that she'll bring her turtle to brunch?" A beat later, I thought: "um, yeah -- this from the girl in the TIARA." I laughed for the first time all weekend.

The tiara rules. I highly recommend it for jolting you out of moods, for forcing you to focus, for just getting motivated. I have mine on now, and I am going to write write write write. I swear.