The Melissa Sue Fan Club

When I started writing my blog several years ago, I began by trying to find a name for it that wasn't already taken. I probably tried thirty before I settled on the current name. I usually forget how that name came to be, but here is the story.

When I was eighteen years old, I was bored one afternoon. I had graduated high school a semester early and moved with my family to another state. I had moved so much when I was growing up that it really didn't seem like a big deal. I actually kind of liked moving because it meant that I would get to meet new people and make new friends. I had tried working delivering newspapers, but my sister who helped me kept throwing up because we were getting up so early, and I really needed a helper or I couldn't get our rural route delivered in time each morning. So, I quit the paper route and got a job at a department store. It was fun because there were cute clothes, and I got a big employee discount, so I knew I would have cuter clothes for college, as well as enough money that I barely had to flirt my way to a free meal once a week. I didn't work full time, so I had lots of time off to do stupid things. Like writing a full-page-essay-format-test-question-with-silly-nonsense-vocabulary-words-to-be-included-in-each-answer-application. It was an application to be a member of the Melissa Sue Fan Club. 

My friends, Mindy and Tyler, were the first to fill out the applications. They thought it was funny, and they told a few of our other friends, who asked for an application of their own. Everybody started assigning themselves jobs in my fan club. When I got to college, my fan club grew. I had at least a couple hundred members and even more honorary members who never got an application. I now had a CFO, President, Vice-President, Chef (who never actually cooked me anything), and lots more. I even had a stunt double, but she must not have been doing her job very well because I have had lots of injuries from performing my own stunts. And my makeup artist slacked off, and it's a pity because I never had a good foundation in cosmetics. (That one was for my mom. You're welcome.) 

I was surprised that so many people wanted to be a member of my fan club, which meant a) they wanted to be my friend, b) they seemed to like my weird sense of humor, and/or c) they wanted to belong to something, even if they thought I was weird. Or maybe d) they wanted to write the funniest answers to my absurd questions and make everyone else laugh when we occasionally would read all the answers together late at night while eating ice cream from the Creamery. Yum.

I wish I still had copies of those applications. I would let you all fill one out if you haven't already. Then I would laugh and maybe shake my head at how weird I was then and how mature I am now. So mature that I won't even take a video of my snoring husband and post it in youtube. 

(Search "snoring husband with shaving cream on his face" when you are in youtube next.)

It won't be Bill, but there might be something funny. 

Does anyone still have an application?