Yes – Preferably for something good!
Honestly, I’d like it to be for something I produced. A writing, my voice, maybe even my thoughts… But it should be something that came from me that wasn’t a child, lol!

I’m a firm believer that when we die, we die.
We may be re-incarnated a few times… our spirit may live on in some immeasurably way… perhaps as a figment of place memory… maybe as a whisp of smoke or a glittering snowflake…
But eventually we’re just done.

And all that’s left are the tangible things we’ve produced,
the memories people have of us,
the stories they tell about us,
the folks who knew us,
and the people who wish they did…

I really intend to leave a lot behind.

But fame is a double edged sword… People who want it but don’t have it would give anything for it. Those who have it, abhor it, and would rather see it dead at their feet… And the small amounts of fame I have garnered have proven unsatisfying in the end and the near misses have been nearly too painful to bear.

Yet – there’s nothing like the feeling of having a throng of people clamoring at your feet, sometimes begging for more, each of them either wishing they were you or could possess you in some way. Each of them wishing to be a part of you, at least for a moment…

Or the feeling of being recognized for all the hard work, suffering, or resources used to get where you are at that moment… That’s another fame-based feeling that is impossible to describe but addictive just the same.

But these feelings are akin to the feeling of standing up for those less powerful or knowledgable or well placed. It resembles the feeling of me stopping fights between burly boys outside of an old two-stepping shit-kicker bar when it was obvious the boy preparing to be curb-stomped was severely out-matched (and yes, I did end up kicking the victor into the street after a slight altercation – But I knew Katie had my back ;D ). It reminds of standing in the middle of the street, with thunder rolling and rain sheeting, daring the ex-marine, who’d slaughtered my fiancé’s kitten in a drug-induced haze, to just try to take me down  – just try – and I would knock his dick in the dirt harder than he’d ever been knocked… and watching him back-pedal and retreat. It is the same feeling I’ve had every time I stand up for the people around me so deserving of spoils beyond number yet who are given a fraction of what they deserve…

It’s the same feeling of knowing that I can and will drag myself to the top of whatever mountain I face, sometimes by tooth and nail – often howling like a wounded banshee, with bloody knees and even bloodier feelings, dragging all the people I care about behind me with herculean strength of will and determination… Because I know that if we all don’t succeed, no one ever will…

But it’s also the same feeling I get when a little girl who has seen me talking at an event recognizes me and calls me out as “Ms. Hollie.” Or when one of our teen scouts proclaims me a rockstar, because I have the voice, the hair, the ink, the piercings, and the guitar(s)… Or when one little girl swears up and down that I, seriously, am “Linda” after having played Glenda the good witch at one of our lock-ins just a month or two prior (and here I thought I’d gotten away with that! lol!)… The feeling when one of my favorite scouts tells me that the part of the GS law that I represent to her is honesty, truth, and respect for myself and others… Those are also good fame-type feelings.

So fame is dangerous, it’s transient, and it’s satisfying…

So, yeah, I guess I’d like to be famous… preferably for something good…

Read Other Answers and Get Some Background in the Love Me or Hate Me… There Really Is No Middle Ground… Series Here.

It is conjectured that the more a pair of individuals share their vulnerabilities, the more likely they will be to have deep, personal feelings toward each other… Sometimes to the point of loving one another, romantically or otherwise. Psychologist Arthur Aaron of Stony Brook University has created a study to prove this point.

The study goes so far as to propose a series of 36 questions, each delving deeper into a person’s psyche with the aim of seeing if a pair of strangers could fall in love following a session of questions answering and looking into each other’s eyes for a lengthy 4-minutes…

As a social experiment, I have decided to answer those questions here, exposing my vulnerabilities to the masses, and hope that others will comment with their own answers, as well, to see if that closeness can be fostered in a far more public way… And if it can’t, well, won’t it be fun to se just how silly I am?

Now…

Question #1: Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?

I would want to have dinner with my deceased uncle Finn. We spent a lot of time together in my youth and he is still one of those people I can point to and say: “This person influenced who I am in so many ways… More ways than I can count.”

Well-loved by many and just such a great person, he is missed sorely all around. Even at his most fucked up, he was and will remain one of my favorite people that ever existed.

His death was very sudden – taken by a heart attack – and there are so many things I do and have done that I know he’d have something to say about, give advice about, commiserate with, might even be proud of.

I think of him everyday. I miss him terribly. I often wonder if there are any of his ashes left so that I might actually add them to the ink in my next piece so I can carry him with me forever… as a bird or a flower or a musical note… or maybe even as part of the road less traveled piece. Yes – that seems fitting.

I have told my children, often, that it is a shame they don’t have an uncle that when you ask what he got for Christmas, he would drolly report “Hookers & Blow” in a jocular fashion. That they would not get to see the way his hands would move when he was describing some intricate thing. That they would not get to meet the man behind the legend. That they would never know the wild hair or the bad jokes or the everything and anything that was Finn.

So, yes… That’s who I would want as a dinner guest: My Dear Uncle Finn