Some Holiday Relationship Insight a la Kelly Kapoor

The Office's Kelly Kapoor is more boy-crazy than me. She's also funnier. Here's a cute essay Mindy Kaling (who is also an exec. producer of the show!) wrote for the New York Times about 'tricking' people into thinking she's adult enough to be a wife and mother.

Scripting a Fantasy of a Family Sign in to Recommend
By Mindy Kaling

Last year, toward the end of December, I was meeting my writing partner at the hotel lobby in Santa Monica where we always work. On the way out, there was a short wait while the valet got my car.

“Big plans for the holidays?” the parking attendant asked me.

“Not too much,” I replied. “Just spending time with the family.”

“Husband and kids will keep you busy,” he said.

“Yep,” I smiled, getting into my Mini Cooper.

Driving off, I felt nervous and giddy, as if I had gotten away with something. I don’t have a family where I have a husband and children. I had meant my family of my parents and older brother. It made me feel a tinge of excitement that someone would actually think of me as a grown-up like that. Even though I was the right age for it, I still felt like what I imagine the protagonist does in one of those “Big” or “13 Going on 30” body-swapping movies.

Who were these people in my parking attendant’s mind? This family wherein I, Mindy Kaling, was the mother and wife? I wanted to turn around and ask him more about what he saw, as if he were a fortuneteller. Who was he picturing as my husband? Was it my boyfriend at the time? Or someone else?

Of course, since I was little, I’ve pictured countless different versions of that family. The weirdest things will make me dream up an entirely new version. When I’m watching television and I see an ad for a hotel chain where “kids eat free.” Photo frames that have a fake picture of a family inside them already. Driving by Sizzler.

This time, the family that I assumed the parking attendant was referring to included a dark-haired agnostic architect husband named Alex who liked ethnic food and zombie movies. (For the record, Alex is a product of my imagination. I realize that no real people are actually architects, and that it is a profession that exists entirely in movies, like art gallery owner or children’s bookshop proprietor.)

Anyway, back to Alex. He was ethereal and dressed terribly because he didn’t care about clothes, but I kind of liked that about him. He did little things that drove me crazy like leaving his suitcase in the middle of the room when he returned from a business trip, an idiosyncrasy I once heard Michelle Obama attribute to her husband.

Alex and I lived in Hancock Park — a hip Los Angeles neighborhood — and I loved him so much that I was in a perpetual state of grinning. The kids were, I don’t know, kids. Really cute, etc. I have less experience with cute kids than I do with cute guys, so I’m not able to describe them as well, but trust me — super cute.

The problem with being a writer of romance and romantic situations is that my capacity for creating and believing in fantasy is huge. Nothing can ever be as amazing as Harry & Sally or, in my book, Joe Fox & Kathleen Kelly from the movie “You’ve Got Mail.”

When I started remembering that this fake family was fake, I started missing them. By the Centinela exit on I-10, I had depressed myself, and nothing had even really happened. Oldie Christmas music was playing on the radio, which made me feel even sadder, and I started to cry. While crying and driving, I consoled myself by thinking that this was probably pretty damn cinematic. I felt certain I must look like a cool underdog from a romantic comedy whom everyone wants to see succeed, which then, actually, inadvertently cheered me up.

The other thing that cheered me up is that the family I was thinking of when I said “Yep” is a pretty awesome family. My mom is a surgeon with an Indian accent who thinks she’s Jerry Seinfeld. My dad wakes us up at 8 a.m. on vacations and plans hikes that sound tiring but turn out to be really fun (and he also thinks my mom is Jerry Seinfeld). My brother is a business school student who takes the time to teach us to do things like video chat.

I have fun adventures with them. We went to Buenos Aires and Iguaçú Falls together last year, and it was one of my favorite experiences. They come to visit me in Los Angeles and we drive down Sunset all the way to the beach so my dad can look at mansions. I love the family that I’ve always had. It is cozy, warm, safe, corny; a PG movie I love, like “Elf.”

So I wondered why I didn’t correct him. Well, one reason, obviously, is that this busy parking attendant is a random polite guy making small talk. And another is that what he proposed was exciting, and sent my mind in a direction I wanted to live in for a while.

Do I want to be the child in my current family, or the parent/wife/grown-up of some other one? The first seems real and comfortable. The second seemed like a silly bit of mischief, a game of pretend, even though I have a sense it might be just around the corner.

I hope my future family always feels like this. Like I got away with a little lie, but with accomplices. “Oh, this is just the cute boy I married and the crazy kids I have, can you believe it? I can’t.”

Is it just me, or is this totally relatable? We're both on the fence about being adults, about growing and transitioning into actual people. I can't picture it either.

Also, for some great entertainment, here's an Office webisode gem featuring Kelly & Erin's faux-girl group Subtle Sexuality: