Do you ever think back about the crazy things that people have said to you over the years?
I have had some doozies.
It’s funny how long these comments can live with you.
When I was in high school, I spent much of the summer with my grandparents in Michigan. I loved every minute of it. I often accompanied them to cocktail parties in Grosse Pointe. As you can imagine, I encountered some characters.
At one such party, when I was about seventeen, my grandmother introduced me to a woman who was a portrait painter.
The artist never said hello. Instead she looked at me with an alarmed look on her face. She grabbed my arm and said, “you need to be careful. You have very passionate nostrils.”
And then she walked away.
For forty plus years I have lived with that warning.
How do I be careful about that?
Am I paying the consequences in some way for passionate nostrils?
While that was a first (and last) on my nostrils, I often get comments on my appearance.
My height is almost always a topic. I am six feet tall.
My dad had a first cousin who was quite short. I often saw him and his wife as we lived on the same island in Savannah.
When I ran into him at a social event, he would say the same damn thing.
“Tunie, I think you are getting taller! Every time I see you, you are taller.”
Mind you, I was in my mid to late thirties. Also understand, I didn’t really care at this age … but it was annoying.
At one such gathering, a dear friend of mine and my parents was standing with me when he started on his schtick. She was probably in her seventies at the time and was known for being very straightforward and blunt.
As soon as my cousin finished his routine amazement at my height, she looked at him out of the corner of her eye and said …
“I think maybe instead you are getting shorter.”
He never said it again.
My hair is often a topic of conversation. I have a lot of it and it is, at times, unmanageable.
Add the Savannah humidity into the picture and I often felt like I had to turn sideways to get my hair through the door.
In the last few years, on a particularly bad hair day, I was shopping at the local grocery store, lost in my thoughts about my list. A lady approached me and said, “do you DO that hair every day?”
I looked her in the eye and said, “do you think I would PAY to have this done?”
We ended up laughing together. She shared that she was envious of all my hair as hers was thinning.
I have never been, and will never be, that person who comes back with a biting response to put someone in their place.
But I love that at almost sixty, I can laugh at myself — and sometimes at them — and often turn the encounter around.
Apparently the barriers are gone.
The nostrils, however, remain passionate.
Watch out world.
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