Getting Prissy?
It’s not easy being a middle aged person. You get set in your ways and you find yourself having expectations, perhaps ridiculous expectations. You go through your day thinking that sanity and courtesy will prevail and it doesn’t and it makes you angry.
The other day, on Facebook no less, a friend accused me of prissiness. Now I have many and sundry faults. There are doubtless people who would be more than happy to enumerate these faults to you and that’s not paranoia; we all like to gossip. Yet prissiness is a fault that I have never been accused of and it occurred to me that perhaps it is my again-ridiculous expectation that folks would think of others besides themselves that might make me look like an extremely prissy old crone.
The accusation came from my complaint that people who snowshoe or let their dogs walk all over cross country ski trails should be ashamed of themselves. I thought my statement was somewhat restrained. After the rotten cross country ski that I had in which my skis could not glide because some snowshoer couldn’t take three steps to the right and snowshoe on the snowshoeing path or some dog walker refused to keep his/her dog out of the skiing trail, I was ready to write something far worse and over the top. After falling and getting tripped up, I was pretty annoyed. To add insult to injury, I got called prissy in public…but the person who wrote that is a really good friend so I forgave her. Besides, some good cross-country skiing friends weighed in so I felt supported in my alleged prissiness.
Then there was the concert at Higher Ground in Burlington. If you are middle-aged and if you have flat feet as I do, I strongly discourage you from going to Higher Ground to see someone that you really like. Feel free to disagree with me but my experience was far from pleasant.
Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings played there on February 11th. Sharon and the band do the best soul music that I’ve heard in a long, long time. The songs are great, the horn section and bass player are flat-out fantastic and Sharon works overtime to entertain you. What a great voice she has! It was bad enough that she was struggling with a microphone that cut in and out but she had the crowd with her every step of the way. She was terrific.
On the ticket, the show time was indicated as 8:00 PM. In fact, that was when the door opened and let you into a ballroom with just a very few seats in the back. The first band went on at 9:00. The Dap-Kings went on at about 10:30. By then, I had sore feet but I was ready for a great show. Just my luck, some drunk guy, ‘way taller than me decided that he and his girlfriend (both with no sense of rhythm) were going to dance in front of me with no care for who was around them. He nearly knocked over a lady well into her sixties. When he jabbed me in the stomach with his elbow…I was not happy and vociferously expressed that. He didn’t care, he just kept it up, banging into other people and being a regular jackass. Meanwhil,e all the other young people danced in place without hurting others. Curses upon such as he!
Life would be so much nicer if we all took a few minutes to consider how our actions might affect others. We’ve heard it before, but the Golden Rule still stands as a way to get through a day by making the world better for others and therefore, yourself. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you….and if you can see Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings in Montreal, by all means go!
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