Game of life: Tag...

Tag you’re it…

Ever feel like you are always IT? The past few weeks, I have had trouble putting my finger on the exact feelings I have been struggling with and then this morning it hit me. I am stuck in the game of life tag game and I have been unable to tag anyone else.  I am IT.

I am the oldest out of 6 kids and the first person my Dad would call for when he got home when my Mom was not home. The first words always out of his mouth when he came home from work were…”Where’s your mother?” When it was apparent that she was out of the house the next sentence out of his mouth would be “Where’s Annie?” I guess my mother was also it. Maybe I should have had a first clue when my baby sister Jean’s first word was my name, in a hollering tone, “Ann!!”

I do think there was a brief period in time that I actually got to tag someone else when I lived alone. I could tag the dog Opie. This lasted about one year then I married ever since then I have been IT. Maybe I tag myself in some situations and have created a vortex of being it. Kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy of female guilt. You know the type, Oh, I will do it because the response or action was not fast enough or the way you wanted. So you gave up and tagged yourself.

I am not sure if anyone else can now be tagged because I have enabled so many of the members of my family I seem to be the default button for their lives. Mom will do it. She can handle it. She can find it.

I am sadly not even sure I want to tag anyone else because I wonder if I was not it would they still want me around or need me? So I guess I am stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Damned if I do and Damned if I do not.