Shop Girl Under Attack

On Easter Sunday I received a mail from someone in my facebook group.
A certain young Californian with a photoshop twinkle in his eye.
Please get a life, he wrote, because the one you’re writing about isn’t that interesting.Oh, I thought, taken aback.
My first hate mail hadn’t come at the best of times.
I’d been feeling uncertain all week; sniffing my sleeve a lot and waiting for a soppy text message that would never come.
He’s right, I thought woefully.
I was hardly a lion tamer.
Lunch was a sandwich, not monkey brains.
I didn’t get attacked by wild animals on the way to work, and if there were any, I could always get the bus.
So, yes, I was just a boring little shop girl who occasionally sold light bulbs.
It was time I wrote something exciting.
Perhaps I could get electrocuted while I was showing someone a light.
Or fall off my ladder onto someone’s dog.
Between the electric shock and flattening the dog I’d get a trauma that would leave me without feeling in my fingers.
The dog owner would sue me of my last pound and I’d no longer be able to pay the rent for the shop.
I’d be left at home stringing crystal with my elbows while Mum rebuilt the business from scratch.
I brushed away a tear and read on.
Additionally your relentless Messages clog up my Inbox.“Oh,” I murmured, sinking further into my seat.
Perhaps writing weekly was too much.
Perhaps every two weeks was more than enough.
What if everyone was feeling the same?
I could just write one blog a month if people preferred.
Or perhaps it was best not to write one at all.
No wonder you people lost the Colonies, he continued.
“Oh,” I gasped, “the colonies.”
I felt confused as well as dispirited.
I wasn’t quite sure how he’d drawn this conclusion.
Neither did I know what colonies he was actually talking about.
All I knew was that if this man was right, then a lot of historians had wasted a lot of time researching when they could’ve just read my blog.
And don’t bother messaging me back because I’ll delete it unread, he wrote.
What had I done to make him so angry? I wondered. What could I do to pacify him?
And, I'm dumping you as one of my groups or blog memberships or fan page or whatever it is that you're inflicting on us.I just couldn’t understand why he was telling me like this.
Why had he waited so long before leaving?
In fact, why had he joined my group at all if my writing so disturbed him.
He ended with the same energy with which he began.
Seriously, you are one of the most uninteresting and mundane people I’ve ever encountered.For a while, I sat at my computer wide-eyed.
For a while, the doubting cells fed themselves and multiplied.
I sniffed my sleeve and waited for a soppy text message that would never come.
And then I saw I had a choice.
So, no, I’m not a lion tamer.
But I am a writer

And I’m afraid I’m going to keep on writing.