Your Matt Damon Index

So, who likes Matt Damon? Not me, particularly, although my husband is a huge fan.  Having said that, I'm not really sure he knows who Matt Damon truly is - he always refers to him as JASON BOURNE! As in, We have to see that movie, Claudia, it's got JASON BOURNE in it! And I always say okay because it seems like a pretty easy way to keep my man happy. (Although I'm not thrilled about the fact that this means I'm probably going to have to go and see Happy Feet 2.  The things I do for love).

[and now that people have told me via the comments that he is an education activist my indifference has definitely turned to respect - hurrah! I'm now officially pro-JASON Matt. Thanks guys.]

We own this DVD set. Of course. 

J's obsession awareness is probably the reason that Matt Damon is they guy I think of when I think universal fame. He is the man who has penetrated even my husband's non-TV-watching non-newspaper-reading non-celebrity-culture-interested memory-of-a-goldfish existence and J is aware of him. He doesn't know him, but he feels like he knows him because he's JASON BOURNE Matt Damon and he's famous. 

He and I were talking about this (J and I were talking, not Matt Damon and I, just to be clear) and came up with a thing I call the Matt Damon Index.  Here's how the Matt Damon Index works: 

Take the number of people who recognise YOU and call it x.  

Take the number of people who YOU recognise and call it z.  

Your Matt Damon Index is x-y. 

Matt Damon's Matt Damon Index is approximately six billion.  That is, pretty much the whole planet recognises him. Even if he recognises a thousand people, six billion minus a thousand is still approximately six billion. At the other end of the scale, that creepy guy who always seems to know your name but you can't quite place? Matt Damon Index of around minus forty. 

Got it? 

My Matt Damon Index used to be about zero. I knew some people; some people knew me. I recognised as many people as there were people who recognised me. The numbers evened out. x minus y was zero. My fame was pretty much exactly neutral. Until we adopted twins transracially, that is. And started pushing them around town in a giant red double stroller. With cow print lining. 

Since this happened, my Matt Damon Index has gone through the roof. People stop me and talk to me and say 'hey, I've noticed you around town!' and I want to say 'well, I haven't noticed you!' but I don't. Suddenly, people that I don't recognise, recognise me.  Our town is pretty diverse - especially in the centre, which is where I live - so it's not the colour of my kids, but the twin factor plus the white-mama factor plus the giant red stroller with cow print lining factor plus the I-go-into-town-nearly-every-day factor and all these added up mean that we are conspicuous.  And dealing with all that is a constant challenge. 

I've been meaning to write about it for months and months - well over a year, actually - and I need some kind of kick up the backside to actually sit down and do it. And I'd really love to know what everyone else's experience has been of this issue. My thoughts about all of this have changed a lot since we came home with our kids and I feel very differently about it now from how I would have expected that I would, say, two years ago. I'm really interested to know what other people think. 

So..... is anybody interested in doing another blog linkup like we did on attachment back in February? 

I was thinking of going with the theme of CONSPICUOUS. 

Obviously what's making me think about this theme is my own experience of transracial parenting.  But you don't have to link about that  - what makes you conspicuous? What makes your family conspicuous? How do you deal with it? Did you choose to be conspicuous or are you dealing with the consequences of a decision that someone else made, or something that nobody chose at all? Are you inconspicuous, do you feel invisible? Do you wish that something about you was more conspicuous? If there's more than one type of conspicuousness that you're dealing with as a family, does how you deal with one thing affect how you deal with the other?  

Let me know if you're interested. If people are game, I'll do another link thing at the bottom of this post. 

References to Matt Damon are entirely optional.


Okay! Here's the link. You really do not have to leave me a comment after you've linked - the text comes straight from the template and I have no way of changing it. It's Mr Linky bossing you around, not me!