Miss Representation

“Have you ever been here before?”

“No dear. I’ve always wanted to come for years, but you know how life is. You keep putting things off until…well when George passed, he wasn’t much for art or museums, he’d rather go to a ball game or car race. Me, I hated the noise and the crowds, just too many people. These places are more intimate. I enjoy the history, thinking back what it must have been like to be living in a sod hut on the prairie or in a tree, so you wouldn’t become somethings lunch. Maybe I make too big a deal of it, but it seems for all the progress, we are still living in trees. Course they are made of iron and concrete now, but still…you live here in the city?”

Ida Mae Gamble was an outgoing elderly woman of mid years, as she would described herself. In actuality she was twenty-six, a student at the art academy studying to be an actress. She enjoyed the idea of being whoever or whatever she wished to be. She enjoyed the gullibility of people, their ability to trust, to care, to help. She enjoyed showing them that perception wasn’t always the truth, way, or the light. Often times it led to a dark stairway, a set of steep steps, and no handrail.

That part of the ruse she didn’t really enjoy. Their faces changing grotesquely from exaggerated smiles, believing they were taking part in some Sherlock Holmes charade they would be able to tell their friends about, to a complete loss of faith. It was as if God himself had told a lie, and they had believed it despite their better judgement.

“I’m not really what I seem. I work for the museum you see; undercover. I guess because I’m old, I appear to be similar to everyone else, here for the glimpse of a past we missed, and now hope to relive if only vicariously. I believe all people would like to be someone else from a different time, if only for a short while. Do you believe that?”

Ida Mae had learned over the years to ask a question which enticed people to let their guard down. That, and the fact that old people are considered the muted generation; there, but not there. Invisible in many ways, their normally timid demeanor adding to their own portrayal of themselves, as a fading time destined for a museum of its own making.

“I keep an eye on things. The majority of the people coming through here during the week are elderly and children, school children on a day trip, mature people looking for a way to kill time. They are the most vulnerable of all people. The two most trusting groups of individuals, and in one place. The perfect setting for pickpockets, thieves of all sorts, and con artists. You my dear seem to be neither. Just one of those people who enjoy history?”

“Yes. I’ve always loved history. The story of who and why we are, what we are. I’m not very religious, not religious at all really. Guess you could say, I’m a realist. Believe what I see, but make sure what I see is what I need to see, not what I’m supposed to see. So many people see only what they wish to see. You don’t learn anything by deceiving yourself just so you can remain comfortable in your perceptions of a world we share with, well, not so nice people. 

I believe sometimes that the majority of people live the lives of people they have made up. Being honest with yourself is the most difficult thing to do. We all want to be happy, the best, the brightest, admired, sought after, and yet most of us are nothing like that. We are just people who wish to escape our mundane existence, and do so by acting, as what we perceive to be, the person we wished we were. You ever feel like that?”

Ida Mae had never become familiar with one of her marks before. They were usually mousy types who mumbled their names when asked, and kept their eyes trained on the floor, as if you were not only invisible but extremely short. She did however enjoy watching them search for answers they had never before considered. 

Ida Mae had developed a technique which she found quite engaging. People when asked a question they had not considered previously, became more animated, engaged, as if she had shaken their cage and they had been awakened from a long sleep. Questions out of nowhere, nonsensical but decisive enough to cause them to forget their intrenched perception of themselves, in a world they didn’t understand. “You have a dog?” “You believe in miracles?” The kind of question that causes you to forget who you are, and identify with the person asking the question.

The person who has a dog, the person who does believe in miracles. “In fact, I believe I saw one just today.” Watching them leave their caves and venture into a distant past, their own.

“What do you do to keep from going insane?” another old standby that jumpstarts the one who was.

“Oh, I’m an undercover detective. I know I look too young to be of any consequence, but then looks can be deceiving. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Ida Mae had been confronted by similar situations in the past, when she had misread her introduction into being accepted by an individual or group. Possibly not enough coffee, too much coffee. Coffee she believed, changed her voice and made her elderly deception less believable, but it could have been she liked this person and forgotten her objective. One of the downsides to being an actress, becoming the part you had assumed. She’d have to work on that. It was one of the very first things you are warned about in class, and the very first thing that seems to happen after the warning.

“That sounds like an interesting way to make a living?” Ida Mae’s attempt to regain her composure and slip into character. She wondered if it was working, as the young woman seemed to be examining her visually for clues. Ida Mae knew she had the propensity for not only exaggeration, when it came to impulses, but presuming she understood what another person must be thinking. She believed it was why she was considered, at least by herself, as one of the up-and-coming actresses of the time.

The detective continuing to scan Ida Mae, “I don’t do what I do to make a living, I enjoy being who people believe me to be. I always wanted to be an actress, but money you know. There are too many starving actors in the world as it is. Not just actors, all sorts who have a dream that ends up putting them on the streets, some in jail. It is their story I find the most intriguing. 

I fancy myself a writer of sorts. Not a real writer yet, but I get some really good stories and characters from doing what I do. Being young, people assume I’m more or less stupid. Old people have a way of considering experience a good teacher, when I’ve found quite the opposite to be true. They mostly allow their perception to lead them in whichever direction someone of ill will wishes them to go. Usually by simply recognizing who they are, not who they are pretending to be.

I’m writing a story about that now. Something about writing that gives me what I was looking for as an actor, but with far less anxiety. You can simply push the delete button and poof, everything and everyone is free to begin anew. It’s the most wonderful feeling being whoever you want to be. Like being born again. You should try it.”