The Winner is All Tied Up

I'm very excited to announce the winner of the Second Annual Two Kinds of People Writing Challenge: Deborah Carroll for her essay Women Who Scarf, which is posted below. You can find more of Debby's writing at her Raising Amazing Daughters Blog. Thanks to all who entered and a special thanks to my panel of guest judges, Ed Padala, Judi Silverman and Molly Bearman for helping me make this difficult decision. Enjoy Debby's essay and start thinking about your entry for the Third Annual 2KoP Writing Challenge, January 2012.

In addition to this guest post, Debby has chosen as her prize the 2KoP logo baseball cap. A special thanks to Laura Munson, who generously promoted this contest and who will also be sending Debby a signed copy of her best-selling memoir, This is Not the Story You Think It Is.

Women Who Scarf

by Deborah Carroll

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who can accessorize with a scarf, and those who are woefully unable to do so. Sadly, I am the latter.

You see them on the streets of any town or city, and you imagine that in their minds, they’re walking a runway or catwalk. They’re strutting their stuff, while my stuff … well, it’s moving down the sidewalk, but something is amok.

They may be wearing jeans, a sweater, boots, a jacket, and a scarf, but when you look at them, you see the total package, a well-put-together woman.

When I put on a scarf, it appears to be something I added to my outfit haphazardly. It rarely (read: never) pulls me together and makes me look as if I gave careful thought to my outfit. The women who “scarf” well (yes, they do it so well, it becomes a verb) look like a complete and detailed image. Somehow the scarf ties it all together and their stuff is ready to strut.

It lifts them from frumpy to fabulous.

I can’t get there. If I’m wearing jeans, a sweater, boots, jacket, and scarf, that’s what you see when you look at me– jeans, sweater, boots, jacket, scarf. Clearly, I lack the fashionista gene. I also don’t own any fashionista jeans, but I don’t think that’s the problem.

A study of these women reveals that the cost of what they wear isn’t the determining factor in how good they look. These excellent “scarfers” come from all walks of life, and all socio-economic levels. It’s not what they’re wearing; it’s how they combine the accessories with flair and flow.

Now, this fashion distinction may not be important in the larger scheme of things. We all know it’s what’s inside that matters. But, what if our exterior reflects our interior? What if my inability to look “put-together” bespeaks an internal scattered mess?

For that reason, I decided to tackle my fashion failings head on and from head to toe. I sought help online. Here’s what I found, “Remember accessories are tiny pointing arrows that draw the attention to the spot you wear them on.”

Tiny pointing arrows? Could that be my problem? Did I shun the spotlight of those tiny pointing arrows for some reason? Was I afraid to have people look at me? Nah, I once aspired to a career in theater, so that couldn’t be it.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it’s not about the clothes at all. Maybe it’s about the people wearing the clothes. Is there something in their posture or their demeanor that is lacking in mine?

I visited a physiatrist, a doctor who specializes in treating the whole person to restore full functionality. If I were lacking something physical, I needed to know. Plus, I had tendonitis, so I figured he could fix that too, while he was treating my “whole person.”

He did treat my tendonitis, and, amazingly, he did find something amok in my fashionista profile. Well, he didn’t put it that way, but he did say that I walk with my head jutting forward. While he didn’t venture an opinion about whether this would render me fashion faulty, he did say it’d likely cause me to have neck and back pain, as well as repeated bouts of tendonitis. He gave me exercises to do in order to check and correct my posture.

I left there thinking that if I just hold my head higher and straighter, maybe I could finally be one of those people. You know, the other kind.

I went home and put on jeans, sweater and, yes, a scarf. I held my head high and checked in with my body. Head directly over shoulders. Shoulders back, tummy in, hips over feet, all in a straight line. I looked in the mirror …

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who can accessorize with a scarf, and those who are woefully unable to do so. Sadly, I am the latter. But I have really good posture.

Do you scarf? Let us know by leaving your comment here.
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Thank you to the other entrants for their submissions. Check out their links. If they have posted their submissions, I have linked to them, as well:

Alicia — Widows and Those Who Don't Know What to Say
Melissa Adams — Traveling the World with No GPS
Christi Craig — A Chiropractor's Dream
Robin Dake — A.M. People and P.M. People
Nikki Di Virgilio — What Two Kinds of People am I Talking About?
Jenny — Romper Room
Linda Gartz — Family History: Bold or Boring?
Julie Ellinger Hunt — Poem: A Demonstrative Tempest
Dana Leipold — Idol Worshipping at the Foot of the Pop Star Machine Generator
Mary Ryan Sigmond — Before and After
Robert Sloan — Humans and Cats
Candace George Thompson — A Squirrel Was My Psychiatrist

Photo credit: NEW Summer scarves by The Greenery Nursery via a Creative Commons License.

New Year's Challenge

[Update 1/27/11: Be sure to enter the 2011, Second Annual @2KoP Writing Challenge, deadline 2/16/11.]
There are two kinds of people in the world. Are you one of them? 

It's hard for me to believe, but I've been telling you about two kinds of people for nearly two years now on this blog. When I started Two Kinds of People, I named it intentionally to give me a kind of structure on which to hang my essays. It has turned out to be a useful literary device, allowing great flexibility, yet preventing my blog from turning into a brain dump. 

Two Kinds of People is a kind of philosophy — not a way to divide the world exactly, but more of a means for looking at it through a specific lens for the length of a blog post. I have yet to write my own archetypal Two Kinds of People post, the one on which my entire life philosophy is based, but I promise it's coming — this blogging year.

Every time I turn around, someone is suggesting another "Two Kinds of People" topic. "You should write about how there are dog people and cat people," someone suggested. Or "You should write about people who vote and people who don't vote, and then bitch about it." While these are great suggestions, they are not my two kinds of people (unless, of course, I choose to "borrow" one of these ideas some day, in which case, I will give proper attribution — if I remember who suggested it).

So, here's the proverbial deal — the challenge, the contest, the gauntlet, if you will. I am offering you — yes, you — the opportunity to win a guest post here on Two Kinds of People. That's right, you too can be a published author. All you have to do is email me your own Two Kinds of People essay. Come on. You know you want to do it. Use your imagination. Test your creative mettle. Vent your spleen. Expound, explain, expatiate. Teach us something. Make us laugh. Make us cry. Make us understand your Two Kinds of People as only you can.

And, if seeing your essay published right here on this blog is not enough to entice you, the winner will also get one of my groovy new 2KoP logo baseball/golf caps (pictured above). Several experts (including my dad and my brother) will attest that these are the smartest, most comfortable, best looking caps they have seen in many a year. And that's not just because they're related to me or because that was what they got as their gift from me this holiday season. No sirree Bob. They really, really mean it.

The rules are simple: write an original Two Kinds of People essay and email it to me by February 1, 2010. The publisher of this blog (moi) will choose the winning entry and post it for the world to read. And don't forget, you'll also win the cap. 

In the meantime, you can check out my farewell to 2009 in my latest Chicago Moms Blog post and, as always, I look forward to your comments. Just click here. I can't wait to read your winning post, so enter today.

"We improve ourselves by victories over ourself. 

There must be contests, and you must win."

— Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)

author, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Update 2/9/10: Read the winning guest post here. 

It's Not Easy Being Green

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who send holiday cards and those who don't. 

I've sent my own holiday cards every year since I left for college. Last year, I chronicled our ridiculous photo odyssey in a post that showed all 23 "oops" photos that we had to take before we finally got one that was holiday-card worthy. The good news is that this year it only took four shots. Maybe that's because we didn't try to include the dog. (That's the best one up there; don't they look cute?)

We've been doing the stairway shot every year since we moved into this house, nearly 12 years ago. The youngest guy, on the lower right, was just an infant when we started. It's a great stairway, a perfect backdrop, and even though the kids keep getting bigger (despite my threats), they all still fit. It's a tradition I love.

In addition to my usual tardiness at getting this holiday project started, I'm struggling with the whole idea of sending cards. On the one hand, I love getting real mail — snail mail, if you will — with stamps and envelopes, delivered to my IRL mailbox. I love seeing the cards our friends and family have chosen, the photos they send and the stories they share.

On the other hand, the idea of sending cards this year doesn't feel very green. Plus, at 44¢ per stamp, it doesn't feel very economically sound, either. 

So, after weighing my options, I am (for the most part) going with this e-version of our holiday card this year. Know that my warm wishes for a happy, healthy, peaceful New Year are still sincere. Know that I love and miss you and hope we can make time to get together soon. Know that this is not just laziness on my part (OK, it's partly laziness — but not 100%).

I'm also going to make it easy for you to send your holiday greetings to us. All you have to do is click here and leave a comment.

May your holidays, however you celebrate at this time of year, be joyful and bright. Best wishes for 2010.

Love,

The Bearmans

P.S. Over on The Animal Store blog, Kenn is giving away a $100 gift card. Just click here and leave a comment for your chance to win on December 22. Pass it on.

And the Winner Is …

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who enter contests and those who don't. 

My grandmother was absolutely positive that she was going to win the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes. No one knows how many magazines she bought over the years, but I believe her Reader's Digest subscription will continue in perpetuity. Each year, during Prize Week, she would get her hair done and dress up every day, refusing to leave the house because she was convinced that Ed McMahon and the Prize Patrol would knock on her door any minute with a giant cardboard check. We teased her about it gently, rolled our eyes behind her back, and secretly hoped she would win. She never did and I, personally, will never forgive Ed McMahon for disappointing her.

Some people are born lucky. In our family, the winner is my youngest boy. In fact, he is so successful at raffles that we now only enter his name. Most recently, at the annual elementary school fall fundraiser, in addition to the chocolate covered pretzels he won at the cake walk, his name was pulled during the raffle, winning a really cool felt pumpkin bucket full of gummy candies that we handed out for Halloween.

I'm not a big risk taker, so most of the contests available to me (gambling, the lottery) don't appeal. Oh, we all have our price, and mine is $100 million. On the rare occasion when our state Lotto jackpot reaches that high-water mark, I buy a ticket. Just one, as I'm only willing to flush one buck down the toilet at a time. So far, I am not a winner.

My fellow writer, Cindy Fey, recently entered a writing contest. That is so ambitious and productive. I'm more of a fill-out-the-form-and-drop-it-in-the-box kind of contestant. Just this weekend, at the grand opening of a new L.L. Bean store at our local mall, I filled out a form to win a $1000 family kayak package. I have no idea what I would do with it if I actually won this contest, as no one in my family has ever been kayaking, but hey, sometimes you have to take a chance.

A few years ago, I saw the Julianne Moore movie, The Prizewinner of Defiance, Ohio. It was based on a book by Terry Ryan about how her mother, Evelyn, "raised 10 kids on 25 words or less" by entering jingle contests during the 1950s and '60s. Evelyn won more than 200 contests, with prizes ranging from food and watches to European trips and sports cars. 

My brain is cluttered with advertising jingles, frequently blocking out important information like my children's names. I've tried repeatedly to delete these maddening little snippets from my hard drive with no success. I still know how to spell bologna; I still know where Bandaids stick; and I still know what kind of kids eat Armour Hotdogs. 

Despite the number of cells my brain has devoted to jingles, I was intrigued by Evelyn Ryan's story. I love that she used her talent to help her family at a time when her options were limited. In addition to her talent, Evelyn learned to jump through all the quirky hoops required of these kinds of contests. It must have been a full-time job. As a life-long direction follower, I appreciate her tenacity and attention to detail. Watching the movie, I became nostalgic for a time I don't remember where these kinds of contests were commonplace. 

So, a few weeks ago I was inspired by Evelyn to enter an online giveaway through a blog called Tippy Toes and Tantrums. The idea was to win holiday cards offered by Tiny Prints by writing a holiday greeting. Guess what? I won! Here's my greeting:

A little merry, a little glow

A little love and mistletoe.

The gift of thanks, the gift of cheer

With peace and joy throughout the year.

Clearly the moral of this story is that I should stop trying to write the next Nobel Prize winning novel, the next Newbery Medal winning children's book, and the next Pulitzer Prize winning editorial, and stick to writing schmaltzy greeting card copy. 

What's your winning story? Tell me about it by clicking here.

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