Kelly (First Draft, Hammer Away at it)

Kelly

From the day she was born, there were always smiles, and they were always pink. Everyone was always smiling at Kelly. Kelly was always smiling, even when she was a baby. No one ever saw her cry. Then again, no one ever saw her mother cry, or her sister cry, or her friends cry. No one ever saw her dad cry - no one saw her dad much either, he wasn't really in the picture. It wasn't that he didn't want to be in the picture, but the publicity just wasn't interested in him.

Now, Kelly's mother was VERY high publicised. She was everything a woman could and should be - she was a vet, she was Glinda the good witch, she was a doctor, she was an olympic figure skater, she was a ballerina, she was a princess and she would smile at every job she took, no matter how daunting it was. It never really seemed that daunting to Kelly - her mother made everything look easy as scrumptious pie.

Kelly wasn't aware that making pie is a really fuckin' hard thing to do properly. She was usually too busy having a perfect bubble bath with a squeaky rubber ducky.

When Kelly decided she wanted to be a ballerina/astronaut/space cowboy/fly girl/tambourine master (just like her mother) her family was naturally thrilled. Well, no one was really sure if her father was thrilled. He was pretty quiet and in the shadows most of the time. Whenever his friends came over, Kelly's mother gave them blank stares, trying to remember exactly who they were. It was the same look she gave her own friends Theresa and Midge, but more more pronounced.

Kelly remembered his look long into her adult years, and she made it a point to remember every name of her ethnically diverse friends. Kelly remembered to at least try to remember every name of her rapidly growing friends. Kelly also gave up trying to remember all their names, because she had too many friends, and the only way she remembered her own name was because it was plastered on the outside of the see-through walls of her room all the time.