Enough Smiling and Head-Nodding

The spreading wild columbine, in shaded areas a flimsy carpet of bronzy reds

 I've told you I had a career that spanned four decades.  It involved a number of staffs as well as  working with the public in general.  Like many jobs, mine came with its share of obligatory dinners, meetings, and social gatherings.  I'd never in my life acquired the necessary backbone to refuse any of these...someone might feel hurt.  Who?  Who are these people?  I wonder about it all now.  I know I had adopted the 'go along to get along' credo early in my life; in fact, it was and is part of my basic make-up.  Though I often heard women say they were loners, I know I really was one. I often felt socially inept, certainly never one of the crowd and to tell you the truth I didn't mind being on the outside watching. However, when having to mingle, if you could have seen me at those times you would have winced at how awkward I was probably looking.  At least that's how I was feeling.  No matter how amused I was, I always would rather have been home.
Yes, I feel like during those years of my life, I had enough smiling and head-nodding to last a lifetime.  The cumulative effect of those feelings was that when I retired I promised myself I would not put myself in any social situations again that I did not want.  I've heard of lots of women who feel like this...age gives their feelings a legitimacy, validates their unwillingness to put up with whatever it is that they feel they've had to go along with to get by.

 Of course to write this down makes it seem more dramatic somehow than it really all was, which is so often the case.