Why Waste Time Worrying About What Others Think of You?
And you thought getting old was just a number.
How often did you not do something you really wanted to because of peer pressure? Were you afraid your friends would laugh? You remember how you needed to fit in as a teen. Wear the right clothing, buy cool running shoes, and sit at the cafeteria table with your friends.
Remember how important having the right hairstyle was. For girls, this was paramount. My hair does what it wants. Usually, it behaves, but you never know.
In high school, I had long hair. Everybody did. My hair was so thick that when it was short, it was too curly (not cool), but when it was long, the heaviness weighed the hair down and was just wavy. That worked for me.
And bangs. Oh my God. If you had real bangs, not just a side sweep, they had to go to your eyebrows or longer. My dad was a barber and cut my bangs (oh, the shame). I would scowl while he cut them and then raise my eyebrows so the bangs would appear lower while I was with friends.
When I was in school, it was popular to straighten your hair. Do you remember ironing your hair? That didn’t work for me, but curling your hair with tin cans would. Most girls used smaller cans to straighten their hair. I had to use large tomato juice cans. Try sleeping with those on your head.
Are we getting smarter?
As we get older, hopefully, we get a little wiser and wear and buy what we like. Social media now plays an essential part in how many people think and what they buy.
The main thing we all need to worry about is deciding what or who we stand for. Do we stay quiet when we know we should speak up against a wrong? Are we still worrying about what people will think?
I can’t honestly say that I don’t care what people think, but I do what I feel is right regardless. I speak up against people in government that are creating harmful situations, even if it isn’t a popular view.
People frequently comment on the fact that I run, you know, at my age. I don’t know if they are jealous or if they think I must be slightly dim-witted. I don’t care.
Writing
Some people wonder why I am now writing. After all, I had a successful career and am retired. Writing is new to me, and I have had to take many classes and continue to take classes just to get this far. I have written my first cozy mystery and am halfway through the second.
I don’t have an agent … yet, but I’m hopeful. Some people have said, “What if you don’t get an agent? What a waste.” I say, what if I do? I am currently taking classes to learn how to self-publish as an option.
This is where the quote from Mark Twain is very applicable. What other people think of me is none of my business. I need to be confident to do what is right, even if it’s not popular. An easy thing to say but not so easy to do.
In my mid-forties, I joined a women-only gym and signed up for a two-year term. It wasn’t too expensive, and they deducted the money automatically from my bank account.
Stepping Up.
As a busy mom of three teenage boys, a wife, and working a challenging career, I didn’t always check my bank balances each month. Okay, it would maybe be a few months.
As frequently happens as time went on, my attendance at the gym became more and more spotty. Two years went by, and I assumed the payments had stopped. Three months after they should have stopped, I realized they hadn’t.
I spoke to the manager and asked her to stop the payments and reimburse the three months they had incorrectly taken. I thought this would be easy. Apparently not!
She said they needed two months’ written notice before stopping the payments. I said that was ridiculous and I was going to the Better Business Bureau (BBB). They weren’t concerned.
The BBB said if anybody asked about this business, they would not recommend them, but they didn’t have any legal authority to do anything.
One of the leading newspapers in our area had a columnist that brought to light situations where people were getting ripped off without recourse. I called her and explained the situation. She called the gym manager and said if they reimbursed me and stopped further payment withdrawals, she wouldn’t write about this in the paper.
They said they didn’t care. At the time, having more than a two-year contract with gym memberships was illegal. I think this manager thought I would be too embarrassed to follow through.
I would’ve had the bank stop payments and forgotten the three-month overpayment if it was just for me. It wasn’t a lot of money, and I could have afforded it.
But I couldn’t have been the only one. What about older women that wouldn’t have been able to afford this? What if they were on a small pension? They would’ve been intimidated by this manager.
The columnist asked what I wanted to do, and I said to print the story. I thought no one would recognize me. The columnist said her photographer would be at my work site at the end of the day.
Bottom line, the story came out on the front page of the second section. My photo was front and center. Many people called me to say they recognized me and thought I had a lot of courage.
I knew what the right thing was to do. The gym paid me back and stopped payments. Hopefully, the people seeing that article might not have been taken advantage of because of my initiative.
Get Started
Knowing what should be done and not doing it because it is difficult or embarrassing gets easier and easier. I needed to show my sons what should be done and not just tell them.
Uncomfortable standing up alone. There are groups to join. Have you ever heard of the Raging Grannies? I’m proud to say the first group started in Victoria, BC, Canada, in 1986.
These activists stand up for what they believe in, environmental issues, peace activism, and social justice. They are now in many cities and towns in Canada and the United States, helping change our world.
You don’t have to be involved in significant issues. Sometimes we just need to stand up for someone being taken advantage of.
Now, as seniors, we definitely know what should be done and have no excuse not to do it. Peer pressure be damned.
