Be the hero – or villian

Turns out I’m no Nora Ephron. I guess the lack of Oscar nominations should’ve been a bit of a giveaway … A friend messaged me, tipsy, from bed. She sent a short video – a gif – of someone wolfing down ice cream. “Me, but with wine,’ she said. There followed a stream of strange consciousness punctuated by dumb gifs, until finally this: she’s thinking of phoning her former boyfriend.

Of course I did what any friend would do: I threw a fit, because friends don’t let friends dial drunk.

When she articulated precisely why she thought this a good idea – she wanted to shout at him – I told her to throw her phone out the window or give it to her flatmate or anything at all except phoning the man, because any call to any ex, no matter the content, will be seen by the recipient as a bitter admission of still being in love.

I told her so. She was grumpy about it.

“Be the hero of your own life,” I said encouragingly, almost literally plagiarising a quote by Nora Ephron.

Complete, Nora’s words read: “Be the heroine of your own life, not the victim.”

I knew my friend would get it though, because we both have this Nora-ism displayed prominently near our desks, as a reminder.

“I’m tired of being the hero,” she wrote back with yet another gif, this time of a cat shaking its head.

I found a gif of a woman rolling her eyes.

“Fine then,” I said, “be the victim.”

Sure, I was paraphrasing, but I reckon it’s in the spirit of Nora’s sentiments, right?

Wrong. My friend said I was “really mean” and cancelled our dinner date for the following night. There the conversation ended.

I figured she’d reappear the next day when sober, but she didn’t, so finally I said sorry because I never meant to upset her; clearly I had misjudged her devotion to the Gospel of Nora Ephron.

Still, neither of us felt like going to dinner anymore.

When I think about it now – which I do often, because there’s been a schism – I realise what Nora doubtless understood too. Yes, you can be a hero, you can be a victim, but you’ll also play the sidekick, a walk-in, a cartoon, or a lead role in someone else’s story.

And sometimes you’re even the villain.