Clareified

I’m Dawn. Well, not really.

I have long avoided the clever “About Me” summary many bloggers permanently affix to their templates. If I’m being honest, it’s mostly because I have been too lazy to put together anything so comprehensive as to merit elevation to the ranks of Hopey and East Coco Beach — that is to say, among the very staple of Clareified’s Mount Rushmore: The Blog Banner.
But, if I’m less than honest, which I generally am, it is because I am just narcissistic enough to believe myself too complicated for such summary. “No one, not even I, knows the real me.”
I AM AN ENIGMA. (True story: the first time someone called me that, I thought they said “enema.” I was fixing to fight.)
But that’s me, not Dawn.
Dawn Summers is an open book…er…blog:

To plagiarize a little Tom Petty:

She’s a good girl, loves her mama
Loves Jesus, and America too
She’s a good girl, crazy ’bout Aiken
Hates horses, and other animals too

Well, gosh, since I’ve been Dawn Summers in some form or another going on three years now, I thought I’d explain how it all started.

Now, I’m talking about a long time ago. Hard to imagine, but I only knew one person who blogged. And she was decidedly undercover. I would read “Kashei” only on the occasions when I was cornered during a phone conversation with the “did you read my blog” question.
“Umm…yeah…what’s a blog again?
After a few months, I would stumble by whenever I got bored surfing whatever it is I used to surf before blogs. Probably deja news, cnn, buffy sites, etc. (Before blogs. Shudder.)
One day, I came across some drivel kashei had written about affirmative action being racist.
Grr.
I’ll racist you, I thought, as I hammered out my first comment.
In the name field I had written Buffy Summers.
“Nah, she’ll know that’s me.”
I changed it to Willow Rosenberg.
Too Jewish to be me.
Xena?
She’ll know that’s me too.
Then it was settled: Dawn Summers.
More me than Willow, less me than Buffy.
I clicked post.
I was in the midst of a huge document review in a windowless conference room at Old LLP, so spent most of my working day away from a computer, but I was anxious to see what the crazies at Spot On would say about my comment.
So a little after lunch I checked back in to Kashei’s blog.
Lo and behold there was a message to me.
It read, in relevant part, “I would like to welcome my best friend ‘Dawn Summers’ to my blog. She is a wacky liberal and I imagine that we’ll be seeing more comments from her in the future that we can laugh at. Bush/Cheney ’04.
Evidently, although Dawn Summers was not as much me as Buffy, my syntax and writing tone were unmistakeably mine.
I had been identified and outed in one fell swoop.
Although I commented with other monikers every now and then, my very public baptism as Dawn Summers stuck.
I suppose if I had known that my disguise would fail, I might have chosen a nom de plume slightly more sophisticated or, at least I would have picked a television character that doesn’t make me cringe to think of her.
Truthfully though, I rarely think of Michelle’s irritating screech when I see or hear the name.
Dawn Summers is (mostly) all me now, if not her own personage altogether.
I am often still startled when someone mentions something to me in real life that I have posted on this page.
How did he know that?
I am baffled when I get sympathy for Dawn’s failings and bad days.
Huh? What? Ohhhh…right! No, I’m fine. Thanks.
It’s a little like Fight Club. Rule #1.
A co-worker sent me an e-mail the other day about people with blogs getting fired and I very casually replied “good thing I don’t have a blog.
And I don’t.
Dawn does, which works out, since goodness knows what I would ever write about.
I’m an enigma!