Misadventures, and Why I am All for Them

Ginny Hazard is a pseudonym I have used for a long time now. I call it my pen name, but I have used it for other things. One day, I hope to see it on the cover of a novel that I’ve written, at least successfully enough to find it in the few dusty corner of an indie bookshop or two. For now, I suppose every writer has to start somewhere. So this blog is where I’m starting.

I’m kind of in the middle of about a hundred beginnings at the moment. So figured hey, why not write about it? (Although I must say, I was shocked when I updated my LinkedIn profile and it told me that I have been working at my job for 7 months now. Is time even a real thing?) This title–“The Misadventures of Ginny Hazard[ous]”– is one I’ve had half-jokingly rolling around in the back of my mind ever since I decided I wanted to be Ginny Hazard. I thought it sounded like a great title for a memoir, but I never really felt like I would be able to get the tone to fit it. The humor in it would be forced at best, ironic and bleak at worst.

Today, it fits. This time, this season, this fumbling into adulthood…Yes. Misadventures is a good word.

I promise I’m not just waxing poetic. (Well, a little bit. This is MY blog, after all.) If there is anything in my life that is a constant source of misadventures, it’s my car. On average, I’m pretty sure I get pulled over about twice a month. Why? Because I have a headlight out. The funny thing is usually if I get pulled over once, I get pulled over a second (or sometimes a third) time in the same night. I don’t know why. But I’ve literally been pulled over so many times now for my headlight that I’ve lost count, and yet my headlight remains non-functional. Why haven’t I just fixed it? That’s a fair question. Part of it is the realistic reasons, of course. It turns out it is not just a burnt out bulb, but a wiring issue, and I just don’t care to take it in to a mechanic, especially since a headlight out is clearly not a priority when it comes to writing tickets. Then there’s the part of me that kind of enjoys that by getting pulled over so many times, I have started a kind of collection of weird cop stories. Once, the policeman who pulled me over “let me know about my headlight” and then asked me of there were any dead bodies in my trunk! Another time I got pulled over I had forgotten my wallet, and I’m pretty sure the only reason the officer didn’t ticket me was because he had the same name as me. It was pretty cool, since it is an uncommon name, but what?! Life is weird.

There’s definitely a part of me that kicks myself for my own irresponsibility when I stumble into a misadventure like this. But then something silly happens, like a policeman, the guy who’s supposed to be the big bad enforcer of the law, makes a stupid joke, or gets excited about a shared experience, and I’m reminded in these moments that they aren’t BIG UGLY MISTAKES. They really aren’t even little marks in a police departments record. They are moments of shared human experience. And they aren’t supposed to be perfect.