Thanks to Uncle Rage blogging Jenna's upcoming birthday, kinda like he did when she was 4 turning 5, a bunch of you have responded with packages, and let me just say in advance of the pending big day -- which is friday -- THANK YOU!!! She is BEAMING, she is freaking, she is celebrating this day and year, and she is remembering the time she still talks about when she was five, and she cannot believe she is seeing it come around again some 3 years later. It's magic. It's "the bloggers." It's the thing she tells her class about that they don't understand; It's a thing that she will tell her kids about that they will understand.
Funny thing is, and this didn't occur to me when I linked to her wish list, or when RB said he was going to -- being that I've been around here for a long time and so has my kid (blogging half her life) -- that some people would see RB's post as unseemly, greedy, nasty, or even as someone said in email, "Disgusting."
Yes, a real live person said that, one who apparently works in marketing for a living. I better never run into this person. Does everyone understand that?
I'll say it again in case that person visits here. I better never run into this person.
The simple fact is, and you know it if you get what's going on here, is that NO ONE can hijack joy away from this place, that no one has that permission, at least not while some of us are here. You can professionalize, you can sensationalize, you can rationalize, you can sanitize but you cannot remove this medium's ability to evoke childlike joy. Not as long as I'm still around.
I bet this person has never, not once, cried for a fellow blogger, probably hasn't talked to one on a phone, or had their kid ride a hotel elevator up and down and up and down with a blogger, or shown other bloggers' kids pictures to her kid on flickr, or told anyone about the great artist known as Pippa that the world awaits, or has never been on the toilet while talking about blogging, or has never lost sleep over a post, or worried when another blogger doesn't post, or doesn't show up when or where you were expecting them to be.
But the other ones of you, those of you who sent and who didn't send, who come here regardless, who know me, who see me here, who understand what I did when I showed you our baby girl five years ago, what I did when I showed you me, all of us, you understand what it's about and what it's not about. What you see shimmering is me seeing you. What a bunch you are.
