A Day in a Life: The End of the Story

 This is the conclusion of the story I've been posting for the past few days. The first part is here. the second part is here. The third part is here. All links will open in a new window.

We stood outside waiting for the Celtic Society meeting to start while people began arriving, singing, and strutting to show off their kilt. At long last, the key lady arrived and let us in. I gratefully dropped my sore, stiff self into a hard plastic chair and prepared to be polite, as one is with strangers. 'At last,” I was thinking, “the craziness is over and now I can listen to this presentation about Brittany and learn something new.” Not quite. Turns out that the person who was supposed to do the presentation was unable to come for some reason and had passed the responsibility to someone else who had no inkling about computers or the internet and had to rely on what books she could find from the library. These consisted of two or three from the early 1950s. She practically read them to us. I sat stiffening in the chair and the smile now seemed permanently fixed to my face. For an hour and a half, she droned on and showed us pictures. It was a sincere effort. Truly, she did the best that she could with the meager materials she had at her disposal. I honestly appreciated her effort, and I  admired her for stepping up to do something she was clearly very nervous about doing, but I was ready to leave. Not yet.

Snack time followed our enlightening lesson on 1950s Brittany. There was lukewarm tap water from the adjoining bathroom sink and little sausages wrapped in that canned crescent roll dough and baked. I took a cup of water and a sausage to be polite. I sipped the water and looked for an opportunity to hide my sausage in my napkin. Another woman was not bothering with social niceties. She took a bite of the sausage roll, declared it inedible and quite conspicuously spit it back onto her plate. Charming.
I began to prepare my good-byes, as I figured it was just about time to go. We had learned about Brittany, we had snacks, we'd been there for a couple of hours. Surely now, we could be released. Not yet.
There was a video to watch! Hurrah! In all fairness, this was the best part of the whole meeting. The video was about Ireland but it was an hour and a half long and although I was unsure about whether I would even be able to unstiffen my body to get up from the hard plastic chair, I surely wanted to make the attempt. But, as the Buddhists remind us, all is impermanent, even Celtic Society meetings and videos about Ireland. At long last, it was over. It took a little doing, but with the exact same smile still locked into place, I got myself out of the chair, out the door and into the truck as quickly as I could limp. I reached over with my left hand to shut the door and burst out laughing. “What the hell was that supposed to be?” I asked Bill. “I have no idea,” he responded. We laughed all the way home and beyond. My long and bizarre day had reached an end.

 Epilogue

The commissioners hired someone to run the museum who did not have museum/history/anthropology experience but had an interest in the town and who was willing to spend many, many hours promoting and fundraising. He was a much better choice than I would have been. I would never have been willing to devote so much of my life to such an undertaking. I hated the town more and more with each passing day, so I would definitely have been the worst person in the world to have that job.

My legs turned all sorts of weird colors, and then the bruises faded. The stiffness in my arm went away. And I was always careful about that spot on the sidewalk in the future.

The Celtic Society dutifully called us to let us know about upcoming meetings for a few years after that day. We never did go back.

It has been 15 years since that day and I still laugh when I think of it.

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