Being a hermit is all very well if one lives alone or with other hermits. It becomes a huge problem, however, when one shares one's home with a teenage daugher who is so extrovert she makes Madonna look like a shy, retiring wallflower.
Whenever she arrives home from school I hear her voice as she walks up the path. Either she's talking to someone on her mobile, or to someone walking next to her. Today it was the latter. Often it is both. Sometimes it is both and then the landline rings and she has to carry-on three conversations. Four, when I start moaning at her and five if you include her greeting the cat. She manages it so well it's worrying.
I went to a presentation event recently at a club both my still-at-home-when-will-they-grow-up-and-bugger-off offspring attend, as my son was receiving some sort of award. The second we arrived there were teenagers swarming round my daughter and she was exchanging kisses on the cheek and "Mwaahs" with them all. I had no idea she knew so many people and I began to seriously wonder where I'd gone wrong in my parenting.
Of course, I know where it all comes from. She takes after my mother. Mummy Dear was heavily into amateur dramatics and singing and generally being in the limelight (now it's just the latter because she's almost eighty-one and a bit past it) and my daughter intends studying singing, drama and dance from September onwards. I have a niece who studied drama and dance, too.
It has just occurred to me that I have five children and not one of them is hermit-like. They're all extroverts and each one is more extrovert than the preceding one. Whatever did I do wrong? Couldn't I have had just one offspring who could have kept me company when I'm hiding behind the sofa avoiding visitors? What did I do to deserve FIVE who always rush to answer the damn door???
My eldest son is a Libran and lives to socialise. While he was still living with me, a day rarely went by without him saying "Mum, why don't you ever go out? How can you not want to go out? Why do you stay inside all the time?". He just didn't get it, poor boy. He thought "Because I don't want to go out" or "Because I like staying in" or even "Because I hate going out" were euphemisms for "I have no friends. Nobody loves me. I am a worthless, useless nobody". At best he was convinced I had agoraphobia.
My youngest son is Libran too and talks to everybody who will listen. When we go out shopping, it takes forever because he keeps stopping to talk to people I've never seen before in my life. All ages too, from toddler through to I'm-not-long-for-this-world. I have no idea how he knows these people, he's only eleven for heaven's sake and he's barely lived in this town for half his life.
As for my middle son, he has the same birthday as my youngest daughter, so I don't really need to say anymore about him. He talks to people on the phone all day for a living and spends his spare time posing in front of mirrors topless and flexing his muscles, stopping only to take yet another picture of himself to post on the Internet with one of various captions that all mean "OMG, I'm GORGEOUS".
My eldest granddaughter is about as extrovert as anyone can get, she's worse than my afore-mentioned youngest daughter and she's got a way to go yet before she becomes a teenager. But, her elder brother, my grandson ... now, I have pinned all my hopes on that one. He's definitely in training for hermitness, in spite of having two parents who probably don't even know what the word hermit means (one of them being my eldest daughter, who is so extrovert she farts at strangers). Perhaps he should come and live with me before it's too late ...
Slightly later ... Ha-ha. I switched on my Last.fm and guess what came onto my personal radio station? "Take Your Mama Out" by the Scissor Sisters. I forgot to mention that my brood are psychic, too. Nice one kiddos, but guess what? It ain't gonna work!!!
Google Mood Ring (Blue): Comfortable, breezy, at rest, lovable