Sunday ramble: the shit fairy and the shrubbery

It's funny and purely coincidental that my last post included a reference to the suck fairy (Jo Walton's concept), because, earlier in the week, even before I knew such a thing existed, I'd planned on blogging about its cousin, the shit fairy. The shit fairy is my old friend Lizzie's concept, or at least her name for it; the shit fairy is similar to any of the vampires that the writers of "Title of Show" urge you to slay. For me, the shit fairy can also take the form of my mother.

I think I told you about some of mom's shit-fairy antics from last week--when, for example, she repeated nastily as I weeded that everything I was doing was pointless so I may as well stop then and there. And when she went on and on about what a waste of time it was for me to have made zucchini pancakes, when I could have just fried the zucchini.

But did I tell you about how, when I had dinner, a few months ago, with my old roommate from Boston, he told me about how he straight-up said to his mom (when she pulled a shit fairy), "this is why I don't talk to you. This--here--is why I don't talk to you." He said his grandmother was the same way.

Which makes sense but also casts the phenomenon in an innocent, passive light: it's something you do because it's what you know. But it's also, whether you know it or not, an attempt to control people. It's a way to keep them down. If you bide the shit fairy, you'll never try anything new or not guaranteed to succeed; you may not try anything at all. If you don't succeed, after all, the shit fairy will just say "I told you so." So why bother?

Because there's good stuff to be had in the unknown, untested. Which leads me to the second, complementary half of this ramble: shrubberies. Not the literal shrubberies (or shrubs, as we call them stateside) that I just planted--although they did indirectly give way to the figurative shrubberies at issue. My dad dug up three rows of day lilies so I could plant shrubs where they were; I'd have hated to throw away the lilies, so I thought about digging holes around the back fence line to replant them. But that would have been a huge pain. Thankfully, a few weeks ago, I expressed this predicament to a friend, who said "I've been looking for day lilies!" Problem solved--or half-solved, as it turned out; she didn't want that many. So, just a few days ago, I was telling another friend that my dad had dug up the day lilies, and she said, "what are you going to do with them? I want day lilies." Problem completely solved; she picked up the rest yesterday. She got day lilies, I got a good home for the day lilies.

And that's what I call a shrubbery: you think, "where am I possibly going to find this thing?" and it just shows up. It works for immaterial things (remember when I was in Budapest, and I really wanted a friend but couldn't think of where I'd find one, and yet, a friend appeared?). Even when it's less deep, it still hits the spot: a couple of months ago, I thought, 'I could really use some pavers to have as stepping stones; it would do wonders for the side yard.' Then, a friend who was visiting with her son wanted to go to the playground, and along the way, we stumbled upon a whole bunch of pavers. A shrubbery, if you will.


A shrubbery as in "Spamalot," when our heroes were stuck in a dark and very expensive forest, and their enemies demanded, of all things, a shrubbery. Knowing that they were in no place to come across a shrubbery, they broke into "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life," only--in the middle of the song (well, toward the end)--to come across a woman coming through with... a shrubbery. That she was getting rid of.

The point is, they happen. But if you don't do anything, because the shit fairy tells you that there's no point, you won't be there to come across it.