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I have an overactive insomniac conscience with a voice a zillion times louder than Pinocchio's Jiminy Cricket ever was.
Please tell me you know who Jiminy Cricket is and I am not just showing my age?
My very own Jiminy Cricket frequently sends me to the brink of insanity as he keeps me awake into the wee hours of the morning, replaying like a broken record all of the dumb ignorant crap that spewed out of my mouth over the course of that day.
My mouth is kind of like an annoying little brother or sister who blurts out all of your secrets in front of your crush, only my mouth happens to blurt out the random things that pop into my brain before I have chance to filter those thoughts. The problem is; unlike a younger brother or sister, this mouth of mine is older and wiser and should definitely know better by now.
What sort of Cringe-worthy things could I be talking about you ask?
I'm referring to those things you say totally off the cuff and in the moment and then later as you are driving home you desperately hope a humongous pothole will appear and swallow you up and end your mortifying misery.
Like recently when I was lucky enough to be invited to lunch with the lovely chef and TV star Annabelle Langbein and I told her that I too once had my own cooking show, only it was a long time ago when I was in my early twenties and it wast as successful as hers. When she genuinely seem interested I went on to explain that it was filmed in my kitchen by a friend so no one ever actually got to watch it and that I may have been ridiculously stoned at the time when we made it.
Yes I said that. *Cringe* Talk about a bad combo of foot in mouth and verbal diarrhoea.
Or then there was the time that I sat next to a lovely man at a charity lunch and I asked the gentlemen what he does for a living. When he told me he was an actor, I assumed he meant that he did a bit of acting with a group of retired Thespians at a local community centre and so I asked him if he ever wished he had tried out for TV.
Turns out that lovely man was Henry Szeps and worse still I SHOULD have known who he was as I was forced to sit through episode after episode of Mother and Son by my parents when I was growing up.
I lose a lot of sleep as I play these conversation over in my mind at night, physically cringing with every inch of my body.
Sometimes its just a benign little thing that I said to someone during the day that keeps me awake at night. Something that I didn't even pay much thought to at the time, but later as I replay the conversation in my mind I recall the expression on that persons face and realise with horror that either they misunderstood what I said or that they totally took it the wrong way.
So then I lie there wondering and worrying if they are lying in their own bed at that precise moment hating on me and plotting my demise.
Clearly I am as melodramatic as I am an over thinker, which does not make for a good marriage of emotions.
And then there are those moments when you are in a public place, like the mile long express line at your local supermarket and your inner Jiminy Cricket suddenly reminds you of something stupid you said and you do that sucking in of your breath and the sour lolly face thingy - only you don't realise you are doing it until you notice how everyone around you is now staring at you like you are a padded cell escapee.
I have no doubt I will probably lie in bed tonight and recoil in horror at the fact that today I openly confessed on the Internet to being a loose lipped social ignoramus ... and let's not even get started on the stoned bit.
Do you ever lie awake at night cringing at something you said that day?
Did you have any idea what I was talking about when I mentioned Jiminy cricket?