Julie R. Neidlinger: Lone Prairie Art Works

Insert tab A into slot B and add some glue and make yourself at home and make me regret ever emerging from the safety of my house. Ever.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 2 comments link this post

Life inserters.

They insert themselves into your life like a tape worm. A wood tick. A vampire bat. You get the picture.

"Hi," they announce, trundling a pile of personal baggage behind them. "I'm here for the duration."

"But I didn't invite you," you reply, heart sinking as they push past you and plop down on the couch. They had appeared out of nowhere with no warning, and you, the innocent, are about to take a hit.

"That's OK. Your house looked inviting so I thought I'd come for a visit."

Folks with strong personalities and no foibles with tactlessness have an easy time of tossing the uninvited out on their tails.

"Get thee hence!" they say, and the life inserters rush off to find some other patsy.

But the rest of us, the patsies, who want to be nice and polite, run for coffee and cookies hoping eventually, with some kind of gracious luck, they'll just leave.

They don't. They're life inserters. The insert themselves into your life, take bits and pieces from the wake of your existance, and pass it off as their own invention. You would probably never choose them as friends but they didn't let you choose. They chose you and that's all there is to it. You're in like Flynn, kicking and screaming the whole way, but probably polite the whole time. That's what got you into the mess in the first place.

"I like chocolate," you say.

"So do I!" they chuckle, nudging up next to, pushing you off the edge of the cliff and resuming the conversation as if you hadn't been there at all.

"I can't stand Instapundit," you blog.

"Neither can I!" they say in your comments, combing your blogroll to see who you read and firing off emails to these bloggers straight away, leaving a trail of yes-man comments on these other blogs that mirror those on your own.

Sometimes the life-insertion process is so gradual that you don't even realize you have a life inserter on your hands until it's too late.

I've had many of these types of people in my life, and I don't understand what possesses a person to become one. Every person's life is interesting, so I can't imagine why people would want to glom onto another person to live vicariously through them or seek out other people to help or "better" through the insertion process. The Talented Mr. Ripley was very irritating. We don't need more.

What's worse than worse is when, after slurping up the marrow they came for, life-inserters use it to bounce up to the next level and start in on someone new. Oh how I love to be a stepping stone for someone else. If only I could go into more detail on this, but that blasted politeness and desire to not hurt anyone's feelings prevents me from telling my latest tale of woe.

The only way, unfortunately, to unstick those stuck on you is to be as blunt and as non-purple in your prose as possible. "Go away" or "leave me alone" sometimes will work. So will a ball peen hammer if it comes to that.

Which brings me to another point.

Never, if you are indeed a life-inserter, ever insert yourself into the life of a person with a lot of rage.

::I'm aware that "insertion" is kind of an unfortunate word choice. You could substitute "inject" if you wanted, but that doesn't flow with the standard "insert tab A into slot B" instruction vibe I've got going.::

::And I know it - the title of this post is awesome. Think of how freeing it is to title a post using 100 words or less!::