“No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world,” – Robin Williams.
Beside a lake in Maine. — Photo by Pat Bean
Just Call Me an Old Broad
Picture, if you can, an image of a little old lady. Then picture the image of an old broad. I suspect the two images are nothing alike, even if they’re of the same person.
Words can’t help but define how we see things. But then there are images that can put words in our heads. The best example I can think of was when I spent a week at Wassamki Springs Campground near Scarborough, Maine, back when I was still living and traveling full-time in my RV.
View from my RV at Wassamki Springs Campground in Maine. — Photo by Pat Bean
My camp site was right next to a lake, and from my RV window I once watched a moose swim across the water, and exit not more than 50 feet away. Watching that moose, I thought how lucky I was to be able to see nature take place so up close and personal.
But I also did a bit of people watching, too, especially of one elderly couple who walked their fancy poodle past my RV several times a day. They were always happy and smiling. I pictured them as an old married couple, one of the very few couples I knew, whose love had grown stronger with each passing decade. I could even see, in my mind’s eye, this old couple at their 50th wedding anniversary celebration.
Boy was I wrong.
The night before I left the campground, I met the couple at the nightly Bingo game held in the campground’s community building. I couldn’t help but laugh when I learned they were newlyweds, having been married only two months previously.
Now, instead of seeing them as a happy couple, I wondered about their pasts – and their previous partners. They had sure fooled this old broad, and changed the images in my brain.
Bean Pat: Expectations when we travel http://tinyurl.com/gm86s7x My kind of traveling and hiking
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