Lily is my hero. You already knew that, but here’s another reason why. Last weekend Lily flew from New York to Seattle to see her celebrity crush, Gerard Way, and his band, My Chemical Romance, play a show. Gerard reportedly lives in Queens and Lily has even run into his brother and bandmate at a club, but did that stop her from flying from the shared city they call home across the continent on a whim? Well, duh, not!
The best/worst part is that before she headed to the airport, she went to the bank to withdraw some cash, only to learn that nine thousand dollars, her “nest egg,” as she puts it, had been drained from her account by an identity theft ring based in Cleveland who somehow used her old Minnesota driver’s license number to secure two cashier’s checks from the same teller at the same branch on the same day. (Don’t they screen these people? Don’t they have some kind of minimum I.Q. cutoff?)
They left her $36. Undaunted, she filed a police report, which was required to trigger an investigation by the bank, and got on the plane. A girl has to have priorities.
The thing I love about Lily is that she lives a life of the mind. They say that about a lot of people, and in most cases that means that they don’t do anything but read and write. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that! said the blogger who hasn’t been outside in 24 hours.) But there are entire worlds inside Lily’s head, fantastical worlds, and unlike many of the rest of us who also sport, shall we say, active imaginations, every once in a while Lily makes these worlds manifest by doing something like getting on a plane with $36 in her pocket to see a New-York based band play in Seattle. Just because she really, really loves the lead singer.
Life is short, Chicklets, life is short. That’s why we love Lily, because she’s braver than the rest of us. She’s who we want to be when we grow up.