Nina Lewis

All of my current inferiority complexes (all 58 of them) are due to the Internet.  At least that’s what my therapist says.

B.I. (Before the Internet), I only felt inferior to neighbors, friends, and the clerk at Safeway’s.  For instance, take Charlotte.  She bottles over 200 quarts of peaches each fall. TWO HUNDRED!!  (I don’t even own that many bottles.)  She does the same for pears, apples, tomatoes, corn, peas, beans, beets, squash, and all sorts of other fruits and veggies.  I feel like scum between toes because I don’t can like she does.

Then there is Annette.  She is another Susan Boyle — well in voice, not in looks.  (Thank goodness.)  I could listen to Annette sing all day.  Me, I have the singing voice of a spider.

Then there’s Brenda.  Harry Potter-esque magic flows from her fingers, through her paintbrushes and onto the canvas creating beautiful works of art.  If you squint your left eye while standing on your head, you will be able to tell that the scritch-scratches on my paper are stick figures.

And Brenda W. and Linda A.  As they play the piano, I realize Beethoven lives in their fingers.  There’s a vacancy sign hanging in the practice room of my fingers.

Now that the Internet is firmly entrenched into our lives, we have the opportunity to meet people from all over the world.  People that wouldn’t normally cross our paths — especially me since my daily path is so minuscule.  There’s Sally, Donne, Lizzie, and Karen, all fun and wise grandmothers; Anne, Amanda and Shabby Princess, all stylish graphic artists;  Marty, Jane, and Ree, funny writers (as in their writing is funny and not that they have a quirky personality); Bakerlla, a fabulously creative baker.  The list goes on and on just like an Ever Ready battery.  I feel as important as a flea in comparison to them.

What skills do I have that they don’t?  Well, I can . . . and . . . er . . . . mmmm . . .

One thing I do know, I wield a mighty mean Weed Eater. Can’t say I know anybody who can delicately trim flowers with a Weed Eater like I can.  Or whack down quakie starts.  Or chop off little toes and slice up legs.

I’ve finally come to realize that life really isn’t a competition.  Honest.  (It’s taken me half a century to figure that out.  I’m a quick learner — another one of my talents.)

If the daisies in my yard looked over at the roses and said, ‘I wish I were like a rose,’ and then started trying to morph into a rose, I would cut it down with my Weed Eater in a flash.  A daisy is a beautiful plant in and of itself.  I don’t want it to start looking and acting like a rose.

If my sycamore tree said, ‘I wish I were like a Broadmoor juniper,’ I’d slap it up one side of the trunk and down the other and tell it to stop being so silly.  A sycamore tree is a great thing to be (if you’re a tree).

So, all of us daisies need to stop looking enviously over at the roses.  A raisy (a cross between a rose and a daisy) is as pretty as road kill.  All of you sycamores need to be grateful that your stately branches stretch to the heavens because Broadmoor junipers just grovel on the ground.

We need to appreciate our own personal uniqueness.  We need to develop our own gifts and talents without comparing ourselves to others.  We need to appreciate our differences, rejoice in them, relish them, thank the dear Lord that we have them.

Now, excuse me please, while I tell this to my other 57 inferiority complexes . . .

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