Sunbonnet Soliloquy

By Jewell Ellen Smith

ME and ME

Now and then, when I make myself be very still, very quiet, I can hear what one Me says to the other Me, and neither suspects that I’m listening in secret to their private conversation.

(This is possible because the first Me is the person I am, the second Me is the person I would like to be, for I’m just like a large portion of other human beings who lead something of a double life: the individuals they are and the ideal characters they desire to be.)

It was an afternoon in April that I was doing a bit of eavesdropping. First Me was raking the other Me over the coals about her HEDGEHOPPER column.

“I tell you, Soliloquy gal, your HEDGEHOPPER articles are no good! You’ve been writing these things since 1971. That’s seventeen years. And, I believe to my soul, every piece you do is worse than the one before. You ...”

“1 try, and ...”

“Well, trying is not enough. I think you’ve forgotten what you started out to do in the first place. Try to remember that the whole idea was that you, as an older Army wife, were going to offer advice and encouragement to young Army wives at Fort Rucker. You plan was ...”

“Of course I remember! The plan was to help the young wives so they could benefit from some of my often ridiculous trials and errors and not make the same mistakes. Also ...”

“Think back some more,” continued first Me. “You laid yourself out strict writing rules. You were forever quoting something Alfred E. Smith said: ‘Be sincere. Be simple in words. Amuse as well as instruct. If you can make a man laugh, you can make him think and make him like and believe you.’ Remember?”

“Sure, I ...”

“Don’t interrupt me, Soliloquy gal. There’s another matter I want to remind you of. You’re getting old -- on the wrong side of seventy already -- and you don’t realize that often when you quote some fellow like Alfred Emanuel Smith, who faded from the American scene a good fifty years ago, these young HEDGEHOPPER readers don’t know who in heaven’s name you’re talking about.”

“Surely everybody knows Al Smith was governor of New York and that he was a Presidential Candidate.”

“Well, enough about Al and all the other Smiths. What you ought to do, Soliloquy gal, is to pick out some serious subjects for your column.”

“Like what?”

“Always get you up a fancy title. Something like The Lost Art of Conversation. That would be catchy. Tell ‘em how to talk. Or, better yet, how not to talk all of the time. Most people talk too much. Tell ‘em to watch out because the less they think, the more they’ll talk. To put across that point, to really cinch it good, you could quote that old Chinese proverb about the wise man and the books.”

“But I don’t know any such Chinese proverb. We were stationed in Nationalist China once, but I didn’t hear any proverbs.”

“Wake up, Soliloquy gal! When you don’t know something, look it up! What do you think libraries are for? You ought to ...

“You needn’t be so preachy!”

“I’m not preaching at you. I’m just trying to improve your writing. That Chinese saying goes like this:

“’A single conversation across the table with a wise man is worth a month’s study of books.’

“Isn’t that a neat proverb?”

“It sounds all right. But you are not a wise man, my dear. So let’s consider this little conversation ended! Maybe you would like to do the next SUNBONNET SOLILOQUY!”

“Oh no! Not me!”

It was apparent that these two might argue back and forth all afternoon. Besides, I was tired of being still and quiet. So I ended by eavesdropping and went over to the typewriter to begin my next HEDGEHOPPER piece.

Come to think of it, how to conduct a conversation might be a good topic. Yes! I could begin with a line out of the poem in the Book of Proverbs, the one that told three thousand years ago how the ideal women speaks:

“In her tongue is the law of kindness....”

Published May 1988. Click your browser’s “Back” button to return.