{"id":341,"date":"2010-04-14T06:00:38","date_gmt":"2010-04-14T11:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/?p=341"},"modified":"2010-04-13T21:07:37","modified_gmt":"2010-04-14T02:07:37","slug":"meet-mean-irene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/2010\/04\/meet-mean-irene\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet “Mean Irene”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Okay, so, nice and mean.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One of the questions I get asked over and over at school visits is, which one of the characters in LEAVING GEE\u2019S BEND are you most like?\u00a0 While I am tempted to say \u201cLudelphia,\u201d because she is so delightful and determined and even when she goes astray, is completely motivated by love\u2026. But the real answer is this:\u00a0 there is something of me in all of the characters \u2013 even the villain, Mrs. Cobb.<\/p>\n

Where does this meanness come from?\u00a0 I blame my older brothers.\u00a0 Particularly Ken, who is just 17 months older.\u00a0 Ken\u2019s the one who taught me to be \u201cMean Irene.\u201d\u00a0 The truth is, I had to be mean<\/em>, just to survive.<\/p>\n

\u00a0While I don\u2019t remember it myself, one of my earliest experiences of meanness came when I was an infant.\u00a0 According to my mother, Ken and Stan tried to kill me with baby powder.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Later, Ken tormented me in adolescence by saying my new breasts, of which I was so proud, looked like \u201crat droppings.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0Lovely, huh.<\/p>\n

\u00a0And yet, this boy was so charming with all my best friends, that each and every one of them eventually fell head over heels in love with him (no kidding – -he even MARRIED one of my best friends!).\u00a0 Which left me alone.\u00a0 And so very angry at Ken!\u00a0\u00a0 All this to say, I was completely justified in the meanest thing I ever did to Ken.<\/p>\n

See, Ken had a Samson-like thing about his hair.\u00a0 He was constantly trying new hairstyles.\u00a0 And at one point, he had this rat tail.\u00a0 Well.\u00a0 One night he made me sooo mad, for reasons I can no longer remember. \u00a0\u00a0I waited for him to fall asleep, then I tiptoed into his room.\u00a0 And, whack!\u00a0 Say goodbye to rat tail!\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cruel, huh?<\/p>\n

\u00a0But oh man, did he deserve it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0And ladies, tell me the truth:\u00a0 I did him a favor, didn\u2019t I.\u00a0 (Love you, Ken!)\u00a0 To find out more about me or Ludelphia, please visit www.irenelatham.com<\/a>.\u00a0 And Jess, thanks for inviting me over!\u00a0 xo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Okay, so, nice and mean.\u00a0 One of the questions I get asked over and over at school visits is, which one of the characters in LEAVING GEE\u2019S BEND are you most like?\u00a0 While I am tempted to say \u201cLudelphia,\u201d because she is so delightful and determined and even when she goes astray, is completely motivated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":344,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341\/revisions\/344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}