Total Karen
Potato says you are one
I just asked what she would like to be called in these pieces.
Potato, she said.
I’d thought of:
My girl
Yuk!
Yeah, you’re not mine. The girl?
Gross!
F?
POTATO.
Ok, bloody hell.
Potato calls me a Karen. Side note - I am going to extraordinary lengths not to name her. In the book, I’ve given her the names we called her at the time; nicknames, and the names she demanded to be called at different stages of her development, such as Elsa. Anyway she keeps a close eye on me, making me constantly aware if I’m stepping out of line, into Karen territory. The ramen bar is dangerous, because I really like those guys.
Each Tuesday we sit after her theatre rehearsals and order the same thing. And I feel so enthusiastic, about the care and love in the ramen, the fact I don’t have to think about what to eat on Tuesdays, or worse, cook, the fact that they are there, solidly, each week, that they are calm and kind in their distant and respectful way. I am so enthusiastic I am fizzing: in the past I’ve gushed with praise; asked for their names (after being regulars for, like, ever), introduced myself and the potato, waved, smiled, made comments about the quality of the dumplings, the decor, even, possibly, horrifically, once, the weather.
The potato would shrink in shame afterwards, god mum! Why can’t you leave them alone?
I can, I would say, but I don’t want to! I’m being my natural self!
You’re a Karen! she’d say. That got me in the heart. Really?
To be fair, I am a middle-aged white bitch with no reason to call any attention to myself. I’m sure I should just crawl quietly through life now. Stop imposing myself on public situations. I think that’s what a Karen is? An irrelevant, ‘concerned’ or outspoken moron who needs to assert she is here?
If I remember correctly, Karens arose during the pandemic: covid-denying white women refusing to wear masks in supermarkets, decrying their rights in broad accents. Roights here in Australia. Somehow they’ve evolved into any basic white woman, usually a mother, who mouths off about something. I think the potato sees it as me being visible or vocal in any way. If I talk too loud in the street, start a conversation with a mother on a train about her baby, run to a doggy and pat it excitedly …
Does that make my dad a Karen? I would die when he dropped me at school in the Tuttle Shuttle, window down: ‘Gday dudes!’
Does it mean I should cease to exist in public with her for the entirety of her teenage years?
Probably. I do find it difficult, but I understand. She’s emerging, and my presence, in the natural order, should be diminishing. However I don’t feel that, I feel I’m emerging too, into a new being, a new era, and that’s probably why parents are so embarrassing at this stage, because they are going through their own transition, into olllld age.
We have a code. She makes a K sign with her fingers beneath the table, if it’s getting out of hand. In emergency situations she holds the K - bam - on her forehead.
Karen Carpenter, I remind her. The rare drummer who sang, like she does.
Karen O.
This is bigger than them, she says.
