Reputation Dot Com

Even though I live a quiet life in rural Maine, retiring early each night and rarely leaving my home except to run errands or maybe have a meal out in a restaurant, my online reputation bespeaks a very different persona. Google me and you find that I am a "kook" who throws a lot of tea parties and called for the assassination of Keith Olbermann. Ha! If only. In fact, I'd like to be reincarnated as a kook, and do wild and crazy things like Goldie Hawn on "Laugh-In," and write a successful autobiography full of those antics and make a lot of money and move to Avignon, where I would sip Pastis and eat liver pate with a couple of chocolate bon bons thrown in for good measure, and be happily kooky tout les jours.

Of course, it's not only me who is drastically misrepresented; there are many undeserved reputations out there--like George W. Bush is evil and Barack Obama was born in Kenya. But it's not just people; things also suffer. Take the rain--what is so wrong with rain? Or even just clouds or a passing shower or two? But they are all consistently referred to as bad weather. "Bad weather!" Like you're chiding a dog that just snatched a burger off the grill when nobody was looking. Imagine if we considered the rain as good,with TV meteorologists declaring, "Great news, it's going to rain tomorrow, and not just a drizzle but a steady, driving rain, all day long! How refreshing! If you're planning a picnic, be sure to wear a poncho and bring a plastic tarp."  Raincoat sales would soar, umbrellas would replace handbags as the must-have accessory and be designed by Gucci and Oscar and Vera Wang and Ralph Lauren. Event and wedding planners would breathe a sigh of relief and consider charging even more for monsoon season, since "the wetter the better" would become the guiding principle.

Something else that has a bad reputation is being old, which these days is like everyone over 30. Few people look at the bright side of aging, focusing instead on thickening waistlines and thinning hair. Okay, I'll give you that those are bad, but the flip side is greater wisdom and a certain, "I don't give a shit what anyone thinks of me" attitude that is quite liberating and downright invigorating when done correctly. Also, by the time you are in your 50s and 60s, you pretty much know how to do everything you need or want to do, and well. My cooking is stupendous if I do say so myself, far better than when I was just starting out and relying on typo-ridden cookbooks in order to make food. And by 60, youthful fears are pretty much conquered. Like now, if I see a bee in my house when I'm home alone late at night I will actually try to kill it, or maybe trap it somewhere, whereas when I was in my 20s I would pack up an overnight bag, feed the cats and go get a hotel room. If aging were a good thing, each birthday would be celebrated rather than mocked. I know it's a stretch to even consider this, but imagine a world where, instead of lying about your age you would proclaim it proudly, without shame!

But the worst reputation of all belongs to Death. People think it is such a bad thing. They fear it all their lives, which is really a shame because there it is, waiting. It's not going anywhere. So imagine if it were seen as something to look forward to! I am not talking 72 virgins in Heaven, I just mean possibly there is the next phase and maybe it's not so bad, who knows, it might be even better than here. Surely there is no Google.