I’m always a little interested in the day people were born. First and foremost, it is a joyous celebration to honor the day we first plopped onto the Earth. Happy Birthday, Earthling. The other thing is my minor interest in the Zodiac. Not so much the daily horoscope thing, as those rarely amount to anything.
I used to read the daily horoscope each day with my Mom as she lived in the nursing care facility for almost four years. She liked to read them when we were kids, and it must have stuck with her into dementia. Anyway, I found that they did not prove true for either one of us on most days. But that is beside the point.
The other part of the Zodiac is the telling of personality characteristics. Now. This part I have come to see is fairly accurate. I am the living, breathing epitome of the Taurus. My partner Mary is a Sagittarius, through and through. They wrote these descriptions as if they had each of us in mind. The same thing has held true for all my siblings and parents.
So when I hear of someone’s birthday, I say, “Oooohhh. You’re a Virrrgggooo.” And then I make a telling face. It’s kind of fun to do if you scrunch your eyes just right.
But I’m way off track, as usual.
I noticed today is Chrissie Hynde’s birthday, born September 7, 1951. At first glance, I didn’t know her from tall trees. But as I read further, I found that she is a singer-songwriter, musician, and founding member of the rock band The Pretenders.
I like The Pretenders well enough, I suppose, but I’m not a fan. And there isn’t much I have to say about Hynde except that she was born in Akron, Ohio, but moved to London when she was around 22, where she put together the band.
No. What struck me was the name of the group. The Pretenders.
Pretending. Pretend. It happens when “we speak and act so as to make it appear that something is the case when in fact it is not.” (Webster)
As children, we pretend. Most of the time, when we played, we were pretending. All in the name of the make-believe, some of us had dolls; others had army guns. I had my Fisher-Price Little People. There are tea sets and magic kits. But even beyond our toys, we had worlds and worlds of pretend. Some of us had imaginary friends, while others played out entire scenes as we built cities in our minds and moved our people from place to place. It was a world of magic in our childhood realm.
And then one day. We stopped.
We quit pretending. Maybe someone told us it was childish, and we had to grow up. Or maybe we just decided on our own. However it happened, we quit. And that — as they say — was that.
As adults, most of us put a high level of importance on honesty and authenticity. Not that we were dishonest when our child-selves pretended. We were just exploring our imaginations.
Yet, in maturity, we can’t show up at Zoom meetings and introduce the 6-foot rabbit named Harvey sitting next to us. People might question our soundness of mind.
But on the other side of that are people who still pretend in a much different way. For some reason, they feel the need to extend the truth, shall we say. Perhaps they claim to make a lot of money or to have achieved something incredible. They might allege to have won the big game or to have met Elvis at a dinner party.
There are more kinds of pretending that goes on in our lives. Sometimes, we pretend something is okay, when deep inside, we know it is not.
All of this hit me when I saw Chrissie Hynde’s birthday today, and I wondered what kind of pretenders they were referring to with their group.
As all of us have been pretenders at some point in our lives. And that’s the truth.
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“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night
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“You will know that it’s real, when you don’t have to pretend to be someone your’re not.”
― Christine E. Szymanski
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“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
― Albert Einstein
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The Pretenders. The Great Pretenders.
