Dear Diary,
Last night I stayed up late watching “Auntie Mame.” I’d love to meet someone like her one day….someone elegant and bold and worldly, who knows interesting people from all kinds of exotic places. People with lovely accents….Russian counts, Egyptian princes. In fact, I’d like to BE her some day! She’s been everywhere. Oh, if only I could afford to travel. I’d bravely roam far and wide and become ONE with the people and places. I wouldn’t be afraid of anything.
Dear Little Tommie,
Yes, you WILL travel. And, through your work, you WILL meet many interesting people who will like you. In fact, you’ll end up with enough interesting road stories and photographs to entertain yourself for years. Your foreign encounters will enrich your life. But just remember: not everyone will want to listen to those tales! Remember not to bore people. You must know when to turn it OFF. Never ramble on and on for the sake of showing off. Ah, I know you, little Tommie. And I know you’d only do it out of insecurity, especially when you worry that you’ll have nothing to talk about at dinner parties, or when you suspect that other people have done more with their lives than you have. Watch your ego, little girl.
If someone asks about your adventures, deliver one or two tidbits — preferably funny ones. People will love and accept you as you are. You don’t have to impress them.
And picture this: You don’t want end up in a nursing home one day, with all the health care workers saying, “that old lady in room 227 never stops talking about the time she met some child star named Shirley Temple in Prague. Or was it Eric Clapton in Prague and Shirley Temple at an AA meeting in Tokyo? Poor old bat. God, if I have to hear one more of her travel stories I’m slipping some arsenic into that drip.”