FretGirl to the Rescue!

I’m worried. It’s what I do. I’m a grade-A, first class, professional worrier of the highest order. In the Hall of Worries, I have my own executive wing. You’re not even allowed to step inside unless your fingernails are bitten down to the quick, your hands are red from all the wringing, and your boots are made for pacin’. But I’ll tell you what’s inside: A life-sized statue of me, surrounded by blow-up photos of all types of disasters – earthquakes, cars driven into the fronts of gas stations, shocked-looking men with railroad spikes driven through their temples. You know, stuff that could happen at any given moment.

In fact, at this very moment I am worrying about something, and I’m really not sure what it is. I know there is something to be worried about, even if I can’t quite pinpoint what it should be. An unpaid bill or an unfinished chore. A child forgotten and left waiflike at school. You know, the standard stuff.

I keep the worry fresh in the back of my mind, just in case. That way, when the furniture repossessors come in and empty my house or child protective services calls to tell me they found my son wandering aimlessly through a drug-infested back alley (and his homework wasn’t even done), I can say sadly, “I was worried this would happen.” Gives me some security.

If I were a superhero, I would be FretGirl. The emblem on my UV-ray-blocking, fire resistant, bulletproof, broken nailproof, smashproof, bee-stingproof, friction-burnproof supersuit would be a giant F enshrouded in a cloud of fear. I’m not sure what fear looks like or how one would draw a cloud of it, and frankly I’m a little worried about that.

As FretGirl I would travel to the far reaches of the universe to help floundering worriers do the job of worrying correctly. Like a blur of lightning (well, not really lightning, because it worries me, but something else really, really fast…but still safe. Like…well I can’t really think of anything fast and safe. That’s a little worrisome.) I would fly to Joe in Connecticut to put a little terror into the act of licking an envelope. Might it cause a paper cut on his unsuspecting tongue and develop a really nasty fever blister? Might some freakish occurrence actually cause his tongue to get stuck to the envelope glue itself and force the poor Joe to forever walk around with his return address dangling from his chin? You never know.

And then off I would go to Linda in South Dakota to valiantly give her a new worry – one that her seat belt might get caught on the outside of her minivan door and drag on the ground, and the sparks from the ensuing friction might catch her gas tank on fire. And if that’s not bad enough, I can give her the good old fashioned worry that she might be caught in said accident in dirty underwear. Hey, it’s happened before.

And I’d go home feeling good about my superhero’s job well done. Well, not really. I’d go home and worry about whether or not I’d worried enough. And then I’d worry whether or not all this worrying is giving me worry lines. Or making me fat.

Not that I really need the superhero job in order to worry like a star. Being a mom and a writer, I have more worries than I know what to do with.

For example, I worry that my big whirlwind book signing tour won’t have a good private place for breastfeeding and there I’ll be in the middle of Barnes and Noble, baring my breast for the entire book reading world. Never mind that I’ve not actually ever had a book published. But that’s okay, because publishing a book comes with a new worry all its own: What if the “Big Call” from the “Big Agent” with my “Big Break” comes at the “Wrong Time?” In my worrying mind, here’s how it goes:

Speed Demon & Teen Goddess: [simultaneously, on separate phones] Hello?

Speed Demon: I got it!

Teen Goddess: No, I got it!

Speed Demon: I got it first! Mo-o-o-o-o-om!!!

Teen Goddess: Fine! You can have it. Gawd, you’re such a maggot!

Speed Demon: [sweetly, as if nothing ever happened] Hello?

Agent of My Dreams: Yes, is Jennifer Brown available?

Speed Demon: Uuuum, yeah, let me get her. She’s on the potty.

Agent of My Dreams: [obviously stifling a laugh] Oh! Well, you can just have her call me back when she’s, er, finished.

Speed Demon: No, that’s okay. She’s been in there for a really long time, so she’s gotta be about done right now.

I also worry that when my writing gets interrupted my characters undergo identity crises, and despair over not knowing what they are to do next to solve their problems. Do they consider running away, and maybe even consider becoming superheroes themselves, CrisisGuy and his concerned sidekick, The Agonizer?

And that, of course, would have me worrying about the security of my side job as FretGirl. Would I be forced to change personas? Maybe end up as FratGirl instead? Now that really worries me.

On second thought, maybe I should forget all about FretGirl. Too much trouble to worry about.

Jennifer Brown is a freelance writer with award-winning fiction, nonfiction, and poetry appearing in over a dozen publications around the world. Jennifer's work has appeared in Writer's Journal, Australia's The Messenger, Long Story Short, and Simple Joy, just to name a few. Jennifer most enjoys writing humor essays, and her humor column, "Adrift in the Gene Pool," appears bi-weekly in The Liberty Sun News. In 2005, Jennifer's humor essay, "Fling Shui for Beginners," won first prize in the global humor category of the Erma Bombeck contest. Jennifer is also a book reviewer for Bookpleasures, Road to Romance, Foreword Reviews, and TCM Reviews, and teaches essay-writing and book reviewing classes for Writer's Success.com and humor writing classes at Long Story Short School of Writing. To find out more about Jennifer's work, visit http://www.freewebs.com/jennifer_brown.