If You Tell One Person

My fellow Mouthy Housewives and I have been keeping a secret.

In August we started a Twitter parody account, @PaulRyanGosling, which melds the horror of knuckle-dragger Paul Ryan and the dreaminess of DNA-winner Ryan Gosling.

We wanted to tweet anonymously, so took an Omertà oath of silence. Just about being the ones behind @PaulRyanGosling, not as a lifestyle choice. But of course I had to tell one person. And unfortunately for me, I chose Husbandrinka.

Let me set the stage for you.

A Twitter account that we created goes viral, has thousands of followers in less than a week, content gets retweeted within seconds of posting by dozens of people, the handle is praised by the Huffington Post, gets a shout out by Rachel Maddow, is on Buzzfeed and Mashable and the New York Daily News. I tell Husbandrinka, expecting, well, if not diamonds exactly, something along the lines of semi-precious gems and a declaration of “he knew it all along that I’d be part of something wonderful and not just because the people including me in the being part of something wonderful part were getting tax breaks to include me” but that’s not how my life works.

Husbandrinka’s reaction was less “how great!” and more “you know that’s not his name, right?”

“Not whose name?” I asked. I’m telling you, Mars and Venus.

“Paul Ryan’s. It’s just Paul Ryan, not Gooseling.”

“Gosling. There’s an actor Ryan Gosling.”

“Is he related to Paul Ryan?”

“What? No. Why would he be related to Paul Ryan? Because they have the same last/first name?”

“It’s possible.”

“No it’s not possible. That’s ridiculous. In the history of life on earth that has never happened.”

“Gore Vidal and Al Gore.”

“That is the exception to the rule that people are not related to other people whose first name is the same as your last name.”

“There is no such rule.”

“ANYWAY. They are not related. Ryan Gosling is an actor and Paul Ryan is an asshole.”

“So why are you calling him Paul Ryan Gosling?”

“For..fun?”

“And what’s this hey girl? It’s in almost every twitter.”

“TWEET. Twitter is the platform and each individual tweet is called a tweet.”

“Ok.”

“And yes, hey girl, is part of the meme.”

“Am I supposed to know what a meme is?”

“It’s this clever thing that gets repeated-”

“How can anything that is repeated be clever? Repetition makes it the opposite of clever.”

“OMG. FORGET IT. Forget I said anything.”

“Alright, but you seemed excited about this thing, so I’d like to understand.”

* * *

So the moral is, if you decide to tell a big secret to only one person, choose carefully. And obviously don’t make it Husbandrinka.

One year ago ...

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