When my husband and I did arts and crafts shows, at least once during every show, someone would wander into our booth, have a good look around, and as they left, shrug their shoulders and say, “Well it’s different!” (Usually pronounced “differnt.”) It actually was an “in” joke between those displaying their art—always interpreted as the speaker not understanding and not really liking the arts and crafts. Growing up in a small town, it was not the first time I’d heard the word in its derogatory sense. Thus, this poem:
“Different”
When I finally made my way into the world so wide
I found myself exotic. Somehow transmogrified.
I liked being the foreigner, eminent in my oddity.
I found that being different was a definite commodity.
It was my prerogative to be just who I was
without creating currents in the small town buzz
of that place I had grown up in. My acts were less explosive.
My strange words now acceptable, not garnered as corrosive.
They thought my weird behavior typical of my nation—
those oddities of word choice and excesses of oration.
In finally being somewhere where “different” was not a sin,
the more different that I was, the more that I fit in!!!
For Fandango’s One Word Challenge: Anomalous. (deviating from what is standard, normal, or expected.)
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 
I did boat shows for years, and we had stories like that about shoppers, too. But often enough that it was a sort of “type” was a couple’s argument or breakup. Frequently right in front of, or even in, one of the booths. That killed sales, visits like nothing else.
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Did the fight have anything to do with what you were selling? I have visions of the husband wanting to buy one of your carvings and the wife refusing to agree and the breakup of a marriage as a result. Reading too much into your comment? ;o). Actually, if I can find it, I have a story that runs along that theme.
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Can’t believe it, but I found the story. Here it is. Let me know if you see this. Not exactly folks getting into an argument in front of our booth, but sorta related in a strange way. Can’t resist “over-sharing”:
When I started doing shows, my husband Bob, who was a sculptor, decided he wanted to do something on a smaller scale than his very big sculptures so he could do shows with me, so he started making incredible ikebana vases out of wood, stone and bamboo. Each vase he made was unique and I would do an ikebana arrangement in each one. After a few years, those vases grew into huge lamps and I started making handmade paper lampshades that looked more like big sails or big cocoons than traditional lampshades. Some of the large lamps were rather expensive and there was one couple who would come to every show in San Francisco, Sausalito and the surrounding towns in the bay area. They would spend a long time looking at each lamp, but never bought anything. Finally, after three years or so, the man came to a show in Sausalito and bought three of our most expensive lamps. As I wrote up the order, I couldn’t help but ask why, after all these years, he had finally bought not a lamp, but three of them!
Because, he told me, that entire time he knew he was going to divorce his wife and he didn’t want her to get the lamps in a divorce settlement! And, the plot thickens. We delivered the lamps to his house, then went back to do two more days of the show. The day after the show ended, there was a Cirque de Soleil show in San Francisco, so we spent an extra night at my friend Sharon’s house in Berkeley so we could go to see it. The tent was so full that we couldn’t find three seats together, so Bob sat in the front row in front of the stage and Sharon and I sat in seats far away higher up in the risers on the side of the stage. During one performance, clowns started drawing people from the audience to come up on stage and Bob was one of the first people they chose. Now I must explain that Bob had a Santa Claus beard and long white hair that came to his shoulders. He loved wild Balinese-print batik pants, and red high-top suede sneakers. He was a handsome man and although rather quiet in private life, on the stage he came alive. Accustomed to performing his poetry in public, he was much more at ease center-stage than he was fighting it out with the hoi-polloi in real life. So, of course, the clowns made much of his hair and clothes, but Bob gave them back tit for tat and the crowd was laughing as loudly at his quips as those of the clowns. So, when they sent the rest of the people back to their seats, they kept Bob up on the stage for another 5 minutes or so.
The show ended and as Sharon and I stood in front of the tent waiting for Bob to find us, who should stroll up but the big spender who had just purchased our three lamps! He was with a very pretty girl and when he saw me, he came right over to me and asked where Bob was. I explained and he said, “Well, there’s someone here I have to introduce him to!” Turns out that before the show, as they were sitting in the audience, he started telling her about these fantastic lamps he had just bought, describing Bob as this eccentric character. She asked why eccentric, what did he look like, and just then, he looked up and the clowns were pulling Bob up to the stage. “He looks like that!” he said. “That’s the man!” The girl would not believe him. It was just too much of a coincidence to be true. We were in a town where neither of us lived, not even the town where he’d purchased the lamps. The chance that we would run into each other was just about nil and yet, there was the object of his story, up on the stage at Cirque de Soleil! And just then, Bob strolled up, and the girl was finally convinced.
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It wasn’t a fight, just two old folk acknowledging that we had been to the races and survived. It was Liv Taylor
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❤️
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“Kennedy, you’re a freak.” OK
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Years ago my friend Giles had open days in his wildlife garden. Some people walked from one entrance to another exit without word. “Not enough begonias” was his version of your response
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Ha. They said this or did he, as a question directed toward them?
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He said it after they had disappeared to quickly
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ha…Perfect.
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Cool. I think being different is better than being the same as everyone else
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