Published: May 11, 2008 01:17 am            

Happiness is being true to yourself

Comment column

I am sitting in a high backed upholstered chair at a fancy table in Jefferson, surrounded by seven women, feeling like this could just turn out to be the worst day of my life. I long for the anonymity of a hotel room, armed with newspaper, coffee and remote control. The women break the ice and chat among themselves, gradually including us. A group of five Texas and Louisiana cousins on an annual trek to the town carry on a conversation that seemed to be related to events of the previous evening. Bob, host of the B&B, comes in from the kitchen with the first breakfast course. I am determined to outlive the weekend.

The food is quite good, and I am careful to eat with what manners I can fetch up from the dim recesses of my memory. I watch the others to see which fork or spoon they go for first, so as not to spoil the illusion I am a sophisticated traveler. Judy is talking to one of the Louisiana ladies, a retired or soon to be retired educator like herself, I think. The largest part of my attention is not on conversation but good table manners and not spilling coffee or juice down my shirt. Somewhere in the distance, I imagine I hear the pronounced echo of an ancient clock loudly ticking. Conversation lags.

Another guest comments brightly that the weather is surely cool for the time of year. All agree, nodding and adding comments. I imagine myself trapped in an odd kind of Victorian time warp, punctuated by the ticking of that clock, completely out of my element. Will I be called on to quote some sonnet or Shakespearean verse to the amusement of sophisticated company? I am more and more uncomfortable. I am just an average hick from the sticks. Surely everyone can see that. Another bemoans winter’s lingering grip despite the green grass and budding flowers. One of the Louisiana cousins puts down her fork and says matter of factly: “Well, cold has its benefits. You can have a hot flash and not even know it.” I almost choke on my orange juice as the table erupts in laughter and sunshine seems to fill the room. We all become friends in the space of a breakfast served.

I learn later these were the same ladies we had heard laughing and carrying on late the previous evening. We had imagined a group of college kids on a weekend getaway. These ladies were utterly without pretense and seemed to be having the time of their lives on their annual, week long, girls night out. What I had imagined as an ordeal turned out to be a delight and I highly recommend the old time feel of a B&B, especially around a table surrounded by newfound friends. Next time you go anywhere, stay at a place like the Delta Street Inn in Jefferson. Our hosts were Bob and Pam Thomas. Great folks.

Later, Judy worried and fretted over what to wear to her high school reunion as we dressed in our room upstairs. Finally, she threw up her hands and decided we would go forth in casual attire and comfortable shoes. In the space of a morning’s breakfast, we left behind crash diets and dressing to impress and worrying over wrinkles and all the other external, inconsequential elements of our lives. More and more, folks of our age and generation are best dressed, so to speak, when they simply go as themselves.

At the reunion, held at Caddo Lake Park, Judy saw all her old classmates again. They were dressed just like us in comfortable clothes. Everyone had a roaring good time. An outsider might have only seen a group of aging oldsters, but inside all those graduates from long ago were the same kids who once sported flat-tops or slicked back hair and rolled up jeans or bobby socks and poodle skirts and Elvis on the transistor radio. Only the outside had changed.

Having a good time is not the exclusive preserve of the young. Once you pass a certain point along the way, you begin to realize there is life after 30, after 40, after 50, after all. When we shed the shackles of convention, of a career spent avoiding conflict, speaking always in politically correct phrases, or pretending to like and dislike what we are expected to, whether by society, upbringing or circumstance, we come closer to our true selves once more, as when we were young and innocent and completely honest. When we now and again allow our true selves a walk in the sunshine, we often discover it is at that time we are at our very best. And so, to quote that Shakespeare feller, To thine own self be true. End of Sermon.

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Guest columnist Michael Thomason is a Palestine business owner.

        

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