Dancing on the Beach

I care for a delightful 100 year old I’ve known since she was 98.

Jean grew up in a small beach town in a house full of kids. She has many fond memories of her family. She also loves the beach and talks about it frequently,  in her signature high-pitched voice. She remembers coming home from school, rushing through her homework and spending many a leisurely evening on the beach, roasting marshmallows with friends, till well after dark.

One of my favorite stories goes as follows: “We had a large living room overlooking the ocean. I loved dancing. I would turn on the music and sing at the top of my lungs while I danced all over that room,” she says, throwing out her wrinkled arms expressively and shaking her stiff hips while her eyes twinkle.

“I imagined it was my stage and everyone on the beach was watching and applauding. I must have moved them to tears. I always thought to myself, ‘Why would anyone be at the beach when they could be up here dancing?’”

Here she pauses,  leans forward slowly, and pokes me hard with a a crooked finger, “Then one day I went down to that beach, and I-never-danced-again,” she punctuates in a hush!

I love that story. If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a thousand times.

You can imagine my dismay one day, when I walked in on the tail end of my co-worker animatedly telling  a captive audience a great story that Jean shared. “…I always thought, ‘Why would anyone be dancing when they could be down here playing on the beach? Then one day, I danced in that room. And I never-went-back -to-that-beach,” she said in a hush.

I was dumbfounded. She had heard it all wrong and I proceeded to correct her right there and then, “No Kay, she was dancing and wondering why anyone would be at the beach…” She looked at me with a pretty odd look on her face. “No, she tells ME this story at least once a week. She used to play on the beach and wonder why anyone would be dancing in a house when they could be playing on the beach,” she finished with conviction.

What on earth? Has she deliberately been telling us 2 different stories for 2 years?

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/dancing/

Clip art retrieved from:

https://www.fiveclipart.com/clip-art-of-old-lady/picture-of-clip-art-of-old-lady-2/

on 11/8//17