About 30 years ago, I worked as an event planner at several historic mansions in the western part of Maryland. It’s kind of high-stress, mostly thankless work but I didn’t mind it, especially wedding planning—the experience came in handy years later for helping out with my own daughters’ weddings.
At one of the inns, I had a general manager named Judith. She was a severe, unpleasant and humorless. Unfortunately, this is the kind of person I often see as a challenge. Oh, you’re miserable? Well it must be my job to cheer you up. I’ve no idea what gave me this twisted, dysfunctional idea, unless it was a Catholic education. I think we spent a large portion of our youth under the impression that entertaining childless women in authority was a task that was both required and impossible.
I set about trying to make brides and far worse, their mothers, happy against all odds for outdoor weddings because I didn’t control the weather and historic mansions don’t have rooms large enough for 150 people. Judith seemed tolerant of my work—after all, I’d started at the inn as a server there to supplement my freelance writing income, and she’d chosen me to train as an event planner. Since this was the case, I worked even harder trying to impress her and occasionally would say something that made her chuckle. Most days I went home exhausted and couldn’t wait to see my first baby, then almost a toddler, who’d laugh endlessly and fill the rest of my hours with joy.
One day, Judith followed me out to my car to put something event-related that needed to be moved to another part of the property. In my trunk, there was an antique quilt. She said something about how that seemed like too nice of a blanket for roadside emergencies. I laughed and said the blanket was for emergency picnics.
“Well, you seem like about the kind of person who’d have an emergency picnic blanket in her trunk,” she harrumphed. “I guess so,” I said quietly. We closed the trunk and she walked back inside.
I wasn’t sure why her comment bothered me at first. I think it was because she said words that didn’t match her insulting, condescending tone. I should’ve responded in an equally nonsensical way, like the French taunting knight from Monty Python: “Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries!”
The remark haunted me for years. Why was it a bad thing that I was “about” the kind of person who’d carry an emergency picnic blanket in my car? Of course I have an emergency picnic blanket in my car. Doesn’t everyone? Don’t we all need to be prepared for an impromptu beautiful day, beautiful state park passing by, and some takeout Kentucky Fried Chicken?
I don’t know what it’s like to go around life seeing the worst in things. I do have dark times where I suffer from depression terribly and during those times I’m certainly not planning cheerful outdoor gatherings. But no matter how sad I might feel, I’ll still try to make a curmudgeonly old person smile just for the challenge of it. I’ll still find a way to dance and sing once in awhile, and no matter how shitty the world is or how much it feels like it’s falling down around us, you’ll always find an emergency picnic blanket in my car, because I’m about that kind of person.