You Can't Hide In A Small Town

Two years ago when we moved to Superior, Bill and I jumped into civic matters in a big way.  We not only wanted to do some "Good" for the town but it was a good way to meet our neighbors and make friends.  Our first foray was to help on the "Crime Free Superior" committee, a bridge between the police and the citizens.  The police department was in the middle of getting restructured and overall, it hadn't had its best rapport with the community, so there was a lot of 'Good' that came with that group, even if we didn't meet all of our lofty goals.  In the middle of organizing the committee, I was asked to serve as an interim secretary by the chairman.  One of the first things we did was to email everybody on the committee each other's email addresses so we could keep in touch if something happened. 

There was a lady in our community who objected to having her email address shared with the rest of the committee and she reacted (or over-reacted, seemed to me) in a big way, saying we'd overstepped our bounds and were going to invite Heaps of Trouble by letting everybody have her email address.  Her letter to the committee seemed especially vile towards me, so at the next meeting, I offered to sever my relations with the committee and not serve any more.  Personally, I felt as if just when the new community door had opened towards me and I'd stepped in, that it was shutting so hard my nose would get hit.  But the others on the committee assured me they didn't share the lady's feelings and please not to quit.  The gist of the matter was that I stayed on to work on the committee; the lady dropped out of attending the meetings; and throughout the course of the next two years my path hasn't crossed hers. 

Until this week-end, however.  Since there are fewer than four thousand people in this town, it is highly unlikely that one could move around and not share the same space at some point, isn't it?  At the Dia de Los Colores art festival this past week-end, I bought a vendor space to sell my SOMETHING FISHY shirts I make.  They set us up in the room with the art show and it was a colorful and lively group that entered to check out the entries in the art show as well as the vendors: we had jewelry, photography, baby clothes, sculpture and pottery as well as my shirts.  Sales were sluggish for me, i.e. to say, I sold nothing but I did talk to a lot of folks and gave out my cards to potential buyers, so it wasn't all bad. 

Towards the end of the day, a lady stopped by and exclaimed over my shirts.  She was wearing a Chamber volunteer badge and said she'd worked the event all day and only then could get in.  She asked if I took plastic and I regretfully told her no, I only took plastic on eBay.  She asked if I had a shirt in a certain size and I regretfully told her no, I didn't have one in the size she wanted but I did have more material and could make her one.  She agreed and opened her purse and pulled out her card.  It was then that I "got it".  YEP!  The same lady who had trounced me in the email two years before for sharing her email address.  But she looked so happy with her potential purchase, I guess she'd forgiven me.  

Until I handed her my card and when she glanced at it, she blinked hard but said nothing.  

I studied her, wondering if my potential sale was going to go down the tubes.  Not then.  She either had forgotten her outburst from two years ago or has deemed it 'water under the bridge'.  Well, if she can, so can I, I thought.  Besides, a potential shirt sale is a potential shirt sale.

So here's my parting shot:  If you live in a small town, and you tend to spout off to people over things you don't like that they do, then you'd best be prepared to re-meet up with those same people at some period in time.  You can pretend you've forgotten all about it (hey, works for some of us Old People) or you can play the Forgive and Forget Scene.  It's your choice... but you can't hide forever!