HERB BENHAM: Walking tall, but writing short
| Monday, Apr 11 2011 03:50 PM
Last Updated Monday, Apr 11 2011 03:50 PM
I met a woman. I was at the Kern County Scottish Games wearing a kilt and liberating myself from the land of pants, seams and wedgies. We were both standing in the line that sold meat pies.
The woman looked me up and down. Hers was not the warm glow that men or women give each other when they are newly met. She shook her head as if confused.
"You don't look like I thought you would look," she said.
When someone tells you that you don't look like they thought you would, there are a number of ways to take that:
You look better.
You look worse.
You look old.
You look young.
You look like my daddy.
Life being what it is -- wonderful, but with a grueling side -- younger and better is certainly the goal but may prove elusive.
If somebody says younger and better, what they mean is that you don't look as bad as they thought you looked or as old as they imagined you would.
Her reaction, although mysterious, was understandable. She had been thrown into shock by our chance meeting and she was trying to come to grips with something that did not sync up. Thus -- the diversionary -- "You look different..." comment.
She was seeking her balance. Her composure. In time, she would regain both, but in the meat pie line, time was going slowly.
Given the shock she had endured, it was hard not to admire her good manners and restraint.
That didn't mean I wasn't curious. What was it? Better/worse, older/younger?
"You are taller than I thought," she said.
"Taller?" This, I hadn't allowed for. "Taller" was a first.
"From the way you write, I thought you'd be shorter," she said.
Now, I have many short friends. It's not their fault that they are short and I don't hold it against them that they are not as tall as I am.
There is nothing wrong with being short unless it is in contrast to a tallness that someone thought you did not possess. Was she intimating that I was shrinking from my responsibilities? Not shouldering the load.
Was self-deprecation the problem? Just because somebody is self-deprecating doesn't mean they're short. It means that they have chosen to bend over and make the short people feel tall. In this case, short was a metaphor for compassion.
Short, in this way of thinking, could have been code for something else. Defensive, perhaps. Maybe I was writing defensively.
Was she drawing a line between being short and being deferential? I've always considered deference a virtue but, with the written word, it might indicate a lack of stature.
Stature? Maybe that's what she was trying to say. The writing lacked the strength that memorable prose possesses.
Could short mean I wasn't living up to my potential? I've thought I could give more, achieve more and go farther, and maybe she had identified the absence of will and the killer instinct.
"I don't know, I just thought you'd be shorter," she said, when I asked her why she had said what she said.
Meat pies purchased, we parted. I thanked her. That's what people like us do.
The are Herb Benham's opinions, not necessarily those of The Californian. Email him at hbenham@bakersfield.com
