Change, Not Always Good

When I first told my family about how my lifestyle was about to change, they didn’t believe me. They’d seen me try to be trendy; but even they, a nice, middle-class, respectable, well-employed couple, parents of four successful children and me, could tell that I was always behind the times, or just a bit off from what was actually happening. No, some people can shop at thrift shops where the used clothing is sold by the pound, and they can throw together looks that somehow reflect their personalities. I’ve tried that, and no matter how I’ve mixed and matched the things I’ve emptied onto my bed from the garbage bag the store provided, I’ve looked like an extra in a crowd scene in an opera, who dressed in the dark.

  My parents have been really quite considerate about not venturing into the basement room we’d converted into the living quarters for which I pay them less than I’d paid for my place near the university during my last four and a half years before I got my degree. But I think that Mom has come in now and then, when I’ve been at work at the bookstore, or the restaurant, or the hotel, or the car rental counter, because my shirts have often magically shed their wrinkles. Not that I can’t iron. I do my own laundry, because not to do so would be so stereotypical; but I just hang things up, figuring that if I need to look good, I can quickly pull an iron over the collar and front area that’ll actually be seen. Why iron the sleeves and back when I’m wearing a jacket?

  So she, and probably Dad, too, know about my eclectic interior decoration, including objets trouvés, things that have somehow become mine over the past decade: “Here, Brownie, take this lamp”; or poster; or antique mirror; or small black-and-white television; or –and how I came to own this, I truly don’t know- the complete works of Charles Dickens, in beautiful leather bindings with gold print, in, um, Danish. I have no memory of dating a Danish girl, or of drinking with a Danish guy, but there it is.

  Anyway, what had happened is that I’d met, at work and also through people who assured me that they had my best interests at heart, several young women, each unknown to the other, and each easily described –sometimes during what could be termed advertisements for them, sometimes even by themselves- as “different.” Evidently, friends and relatives thought that, given my appearance –and I really hoped to look artistic, Bohemian, not funny- “different” was a kind of norm for me.

  And each of these earnest young women had her own world view, her own certainty about what was what and how “what” could be improved. And I was happy to listen, to nod, to ask the occasional rehearsed and thus deemed safe question.

  And so, one lady came to my “apartment,” stood in the absolute middle –she measured!- and held out her arms and turned completely around, and then began telling me how to perfect the feng shui. And without telling me which was actually feng and what was shui, she had me move things around, condemned some items, and made me promise to get others to put exactly where she’d said.

  One was frank enough, at the evening’s end, to say that a first date was little more than a job interview with a meal; and that I wouldn’t be hired, nor did she want the job.

  Acknowledging that I’m too much a homebody –up early and to the job, home late and in front of a screen, whether TV or laptop- I was introduced to the friend of a co-worker, whom she described as “outdoorsy.” Okay, I’ve heard of the outdoors. I’ve heard that some people enjoy it. I contacted her –my friend already having apprised her of what she knew of my characteristics- and she suggested a morning horseback trail ride and then a picnic and a visit to a semi-private lake. Hmm. Horses. I’ve seen horses. People seem to ride on them. So I looked it up, and didn’t have time nor desire to buy fancy cowboy boots; but I did wear my best “running” shoes –in which I had sometimes run toward a bus.

  Horses are big. There should be stairs. And one has to pull the reins when boarding so the head is pointing away, because they will sometimes nip one to help one get up. And bouncing in a saddle, trying to keep that pommel thing from hitting anything sensitive, was challenging.

  As was the vegan lunch; but I just imagined that there’d be a meat course coming, and it wasn’t all that bad. And the swimming –I had my trunks, of course; but no one else did, and I was quickly reminded that fantasy is better than reality.

  The next morning, my admiration for cowboys increased, as did my understanding of why they often walked funny.

  We haven’t spoken since, although I’m sure I was earnest enough.

  A graduate in fashion design drastically culled my clothes, sending most back to the second-hand stores, promising to whip me up some new duds. But she evidently got distracted, and so, the next week, tired of waiting –and wearing the same clothes she’d pardoned, I went back to the store and re-bought some of my favorites.

  Another caused me to have a sprained back, trying to do a yoga pose which she said would get sufficient blood going to the right places so that I’d be able to get a better job.

  The most recent lady knew about herbs and crystals and other things that I didn’t fully understand –not that this was unusual in my conversations with any of them. But her solution –in the literal as well as the figurative sense- to heal my back was what convinced me and my parents that the lifestyle change I should make didn’t primarily involve clothes or furniture or contortions or special candles, but rather to go back to the university’s counselor while I still had time, and try to get on a path to a career, not a job, because the hot bath with special granules that the herbalist told me to take, was, admittedly, so soothing that I fell asleep. And that’s how I ended up naked in my parents’ bathtub, encased in ginseng-scented, blue, and completely hardened gelatin.

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