First, a disclaimer…I would very much prefer not to overhear other people’s conversations at the gym. I try to go at least twice a week, three times if I’m lucky, and what I want to do is get in the pool and move. I’m not much of a swimmer, but I used to take water aerobics classes, and now I just go to the pool when I have the opportunity and do “freestyle water aerobics for one”. I don’t ask for much–I just want my own little spot near a wall where I can just do my thing and tune everybody else out. If conditions are right, that’s where I can do some of my best creative thinking. But if people within earshot are having a conversation, then conditions are most definitely not right, and I can’t tune them out no matter how hard I try. I have just got to get myself a waterproof MP3 player or something.
Anyway, yesterday, despite my best efforts not to, I overheard most of a conversation about Super Tuesday and the prospect of a woman president.
I was actually in the shower, not the pool, so I couldn’t see who was talking, but I had passed some older women on the way to the shower. Several of them–I’m guessing at least three–were having a conversation that I kept catching bits and pieces of…
“I stayed up way too late last night watching the returns.”
“So, what do you think?”
“I don’t knooow!”
“Well, our governor has endorsed Clinton.”
“Boo!”
“I’m not ready for a woman president.”
“Me neither.”
At this point, I really wanted to be able to tune out, because I was afraid I might hear something that would annoy me enough that I’d feel compelled to butt into their discussion. But the water wasn’t loud enough to drown them out, so as I finished up my shower, I heard the conversation turn to the subject of women priests, and how one of the women had a friend who is one, but, “something about that is just not right.” Also, apparently the women’s movement is to blame for “the mess we’re in today”. Whatever that is.
But I wouldn’t be sharing this story with you now, if it didn’t have a positive twist. Here it comes. One of the women said (paraphrased)
“I used to think like that. Then my husband left me when I was 40, and I was totally unprepared to support myself. I vowed that I would never again let myself end up in that situation. … Sometimes your situation changes, and then you change.”
I didn’t hear what the other women said in response, but inside I was saying “Right on, sister!” Because every day, in small ways we have opportunities to speak up and give the other side of the story. And an alternative perspective, when shared by “someone like you” has a better chance of taking root and possibly, as time goes on, softening (or even changing) some of the judgments people make.
