"Stay in the shallow end, sweetie. It's safer."

I saw 'Jaws' when I was way too young. Swimming pool drains still scare me. But I don't think the statement 'stay in the shallow end' applies only to swimming pool safety. I think it applies to keeping it light, not being too 'deep' in the emotional end of the pool either. Smeared mascara from crying is not pretty, dear. And as Annette Bening's character in 'American Beauty' said so well 'You must maintain an image of success at all times.'

And if not success, then certainly an image of perky shallowness.

I'll buy that. To a degree. Needless drama is, well, needless. And sometimes keeping it light is keeping the peace. And isn't peace supposed to be a good thing?

The other night I was out with a friend in Winter Park. Oddly, the street was having electrical outages and so our choices were few and our favorite spot simply had no power at all and was closed for business. So we were indoors with emergency lighting which was, as it turned out, pretty flattering, and limited food options (cheese plate). My friend is statuesque (she's actually a model) with great bone structure and the sort of long, thick enviable blonde hair that looks like it belongs in a shampoo commercial. A group of older men bought us a round of drinks which was actually gracious rather than cheesey and we were appreciative. But then the skanks arrived. In multitudes. And I don't mean South Beach skank which is just gorgeous without modesty. I mean true skank: makeup covering up the bad bone structure, makeup that one day won't be able to obscure the boring inside. Skirts so short you can almost see it. And the point of it all is that hey, you're thinking about it. I don't want to think about your underwear or what's in your underwear. I want to enjoy my cheeseplate and my friend, thank you. Please keep your Sherwood Andersonian grotesqueness to yourself, please. What has happened to our culture? Why has being so vaccuous become so, appallingly, normal? Or has it always been this way?

If I went out dressed like these girls, I'd feel like...like....a drag queen on steroids. I'd feel....absolutely ridiculous. I'd laugh at myself in the mirror for hours. These are Halloween monsters out in the middle of summer. I don't get it. What I do get is that it's somehow become very alright to be this tacky. We've made it alright with our abundance of 'Jersey Shore' and "Bad Girls of Miami' and 'The Real Housewives of Atlanta' or whatever. And it's just freaking terrible. I don't know how this representation of intermingling among the sexes is supposed to further anyone's potential or create anything real.

Oh but wait---my bad---"stay in the shallow end, sweetie. It's safer."  Right. I forgot.

The shocking dumbing down I witness every day on one hand amuses me. On the other, I'm undeniably depressed. Sure, I can numb out with fashion and make a case for 'creative expression' because I do believe fashion is creative. No, it's not solving problems on any grand scale but it's self respect, style dignity, an attempt to project beauty, and that has to be worth something. But this other stuff, this 'I'm for sale' attitude is just, I don't know, gross.

So what do I end up doing at one point in the weekend? You guessed it. I go in the deep end. I ask too many questions. I don't wear a low cut top and keep it light. I wonder about the future, about the fate of society, about BP (will it ever stop?), about this endless crap war we're in (remember? we're in a war!) about how crazy it is that every retail store is on sale all the time because the economy is still terrible (yes, it is!) and how one day both of my cats that I love so much are going to die, and that one day everyone I love is going to die, and that's just super super sucky. Mascara smear-worthy sucky.

I'll try my hardest to stay in this shallow end. But I get curious. About the creepy drain. And about the deeper waters. I like the challenge and the fear. I'd rather face it than putter around with these boring a--clowns. Square peg meets round hole. Again. Maybe it's time to accept that some of us just don't fit in with the rest of them. Maybe it's better to separate from that trashy pack. As lonely, and oh cry me a river, as 'deep' as it ever is.

Even when we're with another, another like ourselves, someone who gets our jokes and gets who we are, and accepts us, we're always alone. The shallow thinkers don't think that way. It must be so much easier to be a Halloween monster out in summer who, even when they finally fix the power and the lights come back on, is even scarier to look at it because they look like a plastic drag queen doll. And it's like a strange alternate universe that I just don't belong in. Yet this shallowness is drowning me. What it lacks in depth it reaches so far and wide.

'Loneliness. It's a place that I know well. It's the distance between us and the space inside ourselves.' ~Annie Lennox