It took a while, but I went from shy to not shy at all. I remember around the time that Richard Nixon was president that I thought I didn’t know as much as he did, but I probably knew more about something, horses perhaps. That was when I began shedding self-doubts and found my loud voice.
The other day I had to go to my eye doctor for a vision test. My eyeglasses need to be stronger, so I booked the appointment a month ago.
When I got to the office, the large waiting room was packed, with only one chair available. So, I checked in and sat down for the wait with six other women.
My vision test would be done by a vision test person, not the doctor so I figured I’d get through the throng quickly.
One woman had to go to the loo and all six of us started telling her to go down the hallway in the office area. I even waved my arms like an aircraft marshaller directing the plane where to go.
Turns out we were all wrong! Laughing at our silly mistake the woman shuffled back to the door of the office and down the long hallway to the loo.
“You go girl!” someone shouted (I don’t think it was me) and we all broke out in more laughter. Not that we were laughing at her but laughing because we’d all been there, not knowing where we were going.
The thin woman sitting next to me with short, spiked hair said she was at the eye doctor for new glasses. Someone else said she needed bifocals, someone said she couldn’t wear bifocals because they made her too wobbly, another spoke of having to use her cheaters for everything.
The spike-haired lady said, “What are cheaters?”
“Husbands!” I said.
After we stopped laughing one lady remarked how she had been married for four decades. I popped up that I’d been married four times and collectively they didn’t come close to four decades.
Spike said, “I’ve been married five times. Well, actually I’ve been married seven times as I married two of them twice.”
“Oh my!” I said. “How old are you?”
“Ninety.”
Spike had a mask on but I could see by her eyes that she was smiling. It was like we were at a comedy club, and we were the comics.
A man patient poke his head in the door and then retreated to sit in the hallway. Smart guy.
It was great that seven strangers could all talk and have fun at a doctor’s office.
I wondered if we’d be the same riding in an elevator.
I once rode in an elevator and everyone was painfully mute, until I said, “Alright, who farted?”
Another time I was in New York for the Boutique Show, which seemed to attract odd people, along with store owners looking for merchandise to order. I was dressed in all black, with a white fur jacket, wearing black heart-shaped sunglasses, rimmed with rhinestones. My salt and pepper hair was perm-curled and as I stepped into the elevator packed with men, I said in my best Mae West voice, “I don’t know about you boys, but I had a great night.”
So, I guess not shy at all. Except one time I was going to a book conference in Orange County, California and I stepped into an elevator with Ben Hur/Moses standing tall in the corner.
Once in the large room, Charlton Heston, the main speaker, began talking about whatever it was when a young man started heckling him about his politics. It wasn’t two minutes before that young man was physically removed from the audience.
Good thing I didn’t speak up. I bet Spike would have.
What’s a girl to do?…be glad I’ve learned how to read the room and know when to zip it!
Lucy Llewellyn Byard welcomes commented that lucywgtd@gmail.com
