The Nemesis Theory

Hello from a much cooler caravan than last week, both in degrees and demeanor.  My lovely husband made us a tarp-based front porch and added shadecloth.  It's like a three-room apartment now! But I digress.

Round about summer of 2006 I moved from Florence, AL to Huntsville, AL and had the privilege to be reaquainted with my friend Emily who grew up there.  In one of our far-ranging, ridiculously animated and gesticulated, highly treasured conversations, she brought to me the theory that creating your own Arch Nemesis was a healthy and entertaining endeavor.  I have henceforth agreed, and being so excited about it, spread this theory to others.  I by no means want to take credit--I don't even know if the theory originated with her--but I thought I would here disseminate it further in hopes of bringing joy to the masses (and by masses, I mean the three of you reading this. I love all three of you.)

Here are the rules:

1) Your Arch Nemesis must be a real person living on Earth right now.  In come cases they could be an entity, such as "The United States Postal Service," but the results are generally more poignant if it's an individual.

2) You must choose someone who you would likely never meet in person, nor have a need to try to contact at any time.  (We all have enough awkwardness in our lives, why pile it on?)

3) This is my personal addition:  The individual must have a name that sounds good when shouted aloud while shaking your fist at the sky.  Melodramatic? Yes. Theraputic?  You better believe it.

Now that you know how to choose an Arch Nemesis for yourself and you can see how entertaining it is, I'll tell you why it's healthy.  Firstly, draw to your recollection the characters we read/watch who have Arch Nemeses and you'll come to this conclusion--they're the IMPORTANT ones.  Batman, Superman, Jim Halpert, Sheldon Cooper, Cinderella, etc, etc.  Ergo, if you have an Arch Nemesis, even a self-named one, you are as important as these superheroes and your life and works are just as worthy of being "foiled" and/or "thwarted."

Secondly, if you're like most people, there are annoying, terrible, heinous, laughable misfortunes that buzz about you during the day for which you can blame NO ONE.  The dryer ate another sock, the ants found your clothes AGAIN, the grocery store is out of that one thing you needed to fix dinner, the short-cut to work you just found out about last week is now up for resurfacing....you know the things. Well, with the addition of an Arch Nemesis, you CAN blame someone. Some one real, living, who finds your life so important and righteous that it must be stopped.  You can rant at them. Rail even. Act irrationally in the comfort of your own home, car, laundry room, and know that no one in your immediate family will reap the aftermath.  Thus, the kick-the-cat syndrome becomes blame-the-nemesis. It's freeing and lovely and saves your children and spouse from a lot of bitterness.

If you're still wary about choosing an Arch Nemesis, I'll give you a couple of examples to get your creative juices flowing.  My Arch Nemesis is Mardelle Atchison, the wife of the one-time Mayor of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.  At the time I was choosing, "Canada" was a great punch-line to many jokes for us silly Americans, so it seemed a natural choice for first broad search.  I came upon a list of dignitaries in Canada, and from there, narrowed it down to "people living in towns with funny names" and then to "people living in towns with funny names who themselves have funny names."  Mardelle is great to shout aloud and shake a fist at, by the way.  Conversely, my friend Bubba (because everyone in Alabama knows someone named Bubba) used the "entity" clause and named the entire state of Rhode Island as his nemesis. Clever, brilliant, hilarious. Another friend, I'm sorry to say that I forget who, named I believe the Czech Minister of Healthy Eating as theirs.  This shows particular genius as it's a rather obscure office and area, with the added bonus of getting to fight back at said Nemesis by eating something UN-healthy. You can see why I like my friends so much.

So that's it.  I would love to hear of your Nemeses, if and when you choose to appoint them. We will band together in mocking scorn and shake our fists at the sky.