Have you ever suppressed who you truly are for fear of new people finding you “silly”? I am so silly – and so the idea of being MOSTLY me (a.k.a. SORTA silly) instead of COMPLETELY me (a.k.a VERY silly) often runs through my mind.
This very debate happened to me a few weekends ago when I was visiting my Mama and Papa Cairo (incredible people who adopted the Elk Lodge as their children while we were in Egypt). Mama and Papa Cairo are used to the silliness of the Elk Lodge and often engaged in the ridiculous adventures we had last year. It was no different during our recent summertime visit. One day, I asked Mama Cairo to do arts and crafts with me and she said, “YES!”, without hesitation. And so, we embarked on an afternoon of fun! We drew pictures of our happy Cairo family and then continued to pretend our paper creations were real! This ensured the entire family was in attendance at the July family reunion. Despite their geographical location of Wawa, Ontario….Emily and Kelly happened to go boating, have lunch, drink tea and fix cars with Mama, Papa and I, in Maberly, Ontario. It was a classic idea. Silly and awesome!
The described behaviour is often okay for those whom you know best. But what if you’re going to meet someone new? This is the exact situation we were in. Can Emily and Kelly (in paper form) come to a dinner attended by other international teachers? Would it be weird? Will the teachers think we’re nuts? These doubts left Emily and Kelly buckled in the car. We chickened out. We acted MOSTLY like ourselves, but not COMPLETELY like ourselves.
Guess what?!
The teachers at the dinner were as silly, or perhaps more silly, than us! They had little stuffed toys that they travelled the world with and they spoke of them as if they were alive! They were COMPLETELY themselves around us! We had the greatest time as a group and each other’s tales of silliness encouraged likewise behaviour.
So………guess what?!
Mama, Papa and I have little stuffed toys that will soon travel the world with us. And, just maybe, there are some little paper dolls in the suitcases of our new friends who are off to Morocco!
Throw away the “SORTA”…..from here on out…..I am “COMPLETELY” me! If you don’t already, you can expect a whole lot of SILLY in my upcoming posts!
P.S. Pictures of our travel companions will be available soon!
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