A friend I see from time to time emailed me today, asking if things are okay since my blogs have been "less than cheery" lately. Which brings to mind the less than cheery reality that in this day and age, or at least in this neck of the woods--the neck being Maine and the woods being the world--when a neighbor suspects that you might not be well, she sends an email even though she lives down the block, a two-minute walk away. She doesn't call on the phone, or stop by with flowers or cookies, or stick a note in the door, or whatever. Mayberry it's not. This comes fast on the heels of another neighbor telling me that one of my blogs was "not nice," so I may be a tad sensitive.
Listen: If I were getting paid to pretend to be cheery, I could be cheery. Or if the world were a cheerier place, I could be cheery. Or if I did not need hip replacement surgery and could instead go for a run every morning like I did in the old days when I was
much cheerier, I could be cheery. But none of those things are the case, and so, as the famous chef-slash-racist Paula Deen said tearfully on national TV, "I is what I is and I'm not gonna change." And FYI, in New York or DC, not being cheery is considered fairly normal behavior.
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