Occasionally, someone will recognize me at a coffee shop on a day when my hair looks really great and say, “Hey, I loved that thing you wrote.” No one will recognize me at a Duane Reade when I’m browsing creams for athlete’s foot.
Sixty per cent of moms will know and adore me, but a hundred per cent of Internet trolls will have no idea that I exist.
No one will ever see a photo of my face on a scale that is larger than my actual face.
Exactly one person will ask for my autograph, and they won’t tell anybody that I still sign my name in elementary-school cursive.
I will never have to wait for a table at Panera Bread.
People I’ve met in passing will refer to me as “private” instead of “socially anxious” or “prone to hiding in the pile of coats on the bed during parties.”
Fame will bring me enough money to make rent, put all of my future dogs through obedience school, and keep Planned Parenthood afloat, but not so much that some evil fifth cousin will come out of the woodwork to con me into paying for his snake’s cosmetic dental work.
I’ll need to travel with a security detail, but it will be a pack of well-trained Chiweenies.
The only place I’ll be too famous to go will be the gym. And I’ll be sad, at first. But I’ll get over it.
My tweets will still only get about twelve likes, but one of them will always be from my close friend and confidante Mindy Kaling, so, who really cares about the numbers?
My parents will let me pick up the check when we go out to eat, as long as we’re eating at Panera Bread. And we have a coupon. And the bread bowls are on sale.
Upon leaving Panera, my mom will hear a rustling in the bushes and cry out, “Oh, no! Is that the paparazzi?” But it’ll just be a large squirrel—one with no plans to put my photo on the cover of Us Weekly below a rude headline like “BABY BUMP?”
My peers will start describing me as “cut from a different cloth” instead of “blissfully unaware that her shirt is inside out.”
I will fulfill my lifelong dream (and risk an athlete’s-foot relapse) by competing on “Dancing with the Stars.” Somewhere out there, a viewer at home will ask their partner, “Isn’t she too famous to be on this show?” But their partner will confirm that I am not.
With my modest platform, I’ll lead a crusade against Proactiv and start a foundation for teens who’ve been burned the night before yearbook photos—both figuratively and chemically. I’ll further raise awareness by tweeting out my own eighth-grade-yearbook picture, in which my face is dry and splotchy and my shirt is bleached orange around the collar. The tweet will get twenty-seven likes (and one retweet, from Mindy Kaling).
My dad will start telling people that I’ve always been a “dreamer” instead of a “person who physically cannot get out of bed before 10 A.M.”
I’ll be chosen as the new face of Panera Bread. There will be no billboards, per my contract.
