ON THE OTHER HAND…it takes hubris to explore and discover!
I’ve written about my tendency to jump into things with careless abandon and interfere with what’s going on in a way that is basically self-satisfying. Some may consider it selfish gratification. I just do it — because I can! I mean my own curiosity and headlong impatience is one of the things that I am most grateful for, even though it has cost me money, time, pain, scars, surgery and sometimes even friends.
But never have I allowed the inscrutability of the unknown to discourage me from poking it! Not even with a parent saying, “be careful, Susan.”
It’s built-in, and has less to do with insolence and resistance than with a simple case of gotta-know; gotta find out. And I am very glad for this Calamity Jane sort of hubris. I’m sitting here at 79 years old, affirming this. Nodding yes!
I actually LIKE getting lost on my way to somewhere. I allow time to do it, in fact, even if I know where I’m going. Is it selfish of me to be so loose around the edges as to look with interest at unexpected surprises as I go? I try to set things up so that I don’t have to be panicked when I have a flat tire, or find a garage sale, or smile at and talk with that crochety old guy by the storefront who frowns. And even hug him if he laughs!
I like that about myself. I would not know 98% of what I know first hand if I had not freely gone out of the lines. The straight and narrow? … well I think I would have climbed over the walls had I been trapped in the straight and narrow.
And I had a Dad who was like that — or must have been — because he got it. He knew I would try almost anything that was not obviously deadly. And he did his best to get me ready to punt if in a pinch.
Short vignette: Susan in a snow storm going to a college party with a pencil thin dress and spike heels. Driving her 51 Chevy Coupe up a long hill and realizing that everyone else was sideways and even backwards trying to go up the hill, and knowing she had to keep moving around these poor drivers and get to the top so she could put chains on! And yes I did. I knew how to jack up the car and put chains on it. And hitch them right so they wouldn’t flap. In high heels and a pencil thin dress. In the snow with cars skidding past me! And I did go to that party. It was all the way into Philadelphia and out the other side. My Dad knew I would make it.
I love my collection of true stories like that. No one ever told me I was “only a girl”, or “only a woman”. So I never really learned that. I tried all kinds of things, and usually too many at a time so that I was always having to scuffle around in a frenzy to get all my commitments fulfilled. A lot of commitments went unfulfilled because of that. Hasty “yesses” that cost a lot. Whole marriages! Yes, I have paid my dues on headlong adventures.
But I learned early that one does not always die from trying things that seem unseemly or a waste of time. One learns!
Short Vignette: Here’s the gismo I designed to put into a hole that presented itself right in the side of a beautiful hand carved bowl. Here it looks like a hissy cat to me. But turned around, and with some polishing and a thin dowel peg, it made a really engaging hole-filler in the side of that bowl, which was carried off by a family from my booth at an art walk with such delight. They chose it of all the art at the art walk! The whole family agreed that that was The Art they would buy with their budget.
This bowl became an extra special entity! Not because it was the most perfect bowl in the world, but that it survived what seemed to be a horrible disaster and became the happy partner with a fun, funny, and lovingly-made solution.
(May God see me as something like this, I pray. I am pretty sure that God has the same confidence in my experimental activities as my father did.)
“Headlong and Headstrong Susie”, my cousin called me. I can still see the extended family shaking their heads about my ricocheting journey through my life. But still, did they know what it was like to solve puzzles? What it was like to create something fascinating and sometimes beautiful out of odd raw material? To find out what is under that old well house?
Pile of metal scraps? Let’s get into it! These are so wonderful and shiny and clinky! They feel good. What can we do with these? Etc.
A road called Harry’s Brick Lane turning off I-90 on the way across the country? Why is it called that? What is down this road? Let’s find out.
What would happen if I turned this painting upside down? What would happen if I drizzled ink from one corner to the other and let it pool up where it wanted?
Why not go-out-for the Senior Play? Let’s go for the role of Kate in Taming of the Shrew! Let’s go ahead and learn that whole script and do it in front of the whole student body and their parents! While getting to both rehearsal and swimming practice on time.( I did this! I cannot now understand how I did this while carrying five majors and getting good grades.)
Maybe it was my English cousin who used to say “The worst they can do is kill you.” That was her answer to those who winced and worried.
Bottom line here is that I want to know what will happen. If it looks interesting and begs to be investigated and tried out, why not?
That may be why I seem to be jumping into the middle of the stage when something’s going on, and asking impertinent questions to Those Who Know, and interrupting the group.
And then I think — how selfish to always assume that I have a right to butt in, to climb on, to turn on the tap, or start the motor. To fly upside down? But is it? Or is it what I am supposed to be doing? SOMEone has to do this! Or we’d never find out!
This may sound like bragging. But it is not. It’s the confession of a bumped up old lady with scars to show for all the wild stuff, and such rich memories of people, places and things. I survived them and was glad to move on. But at the same time I miss each one of them. Even the horrible 9’s tables in elementary school.
Susan (replanted Cowbirder) © March 13 2017
