Throughout my life I’ve had various people tell me that I have an ‘old soul’. Depending on the context, this can perceived as a compliment, an insult, or just an observation. I think it mostly spurs from the fact that I’ve always been comfortable talking to my elders – and I have weird medical issues that generally plague the geriatric set.
I remember the first time this happened, I was probably 12 or 13 and was having a chat with my friend Cheri’s Mother. I’m not sure how we got on to the topic, but we started chatting about the park at the end of her street and the ‘hoodlums’ that were always there causing trouble, leaving garbage around, and making the park unwelcoming to young children and families. I was agreeing with her about the bad influence these kids were having on the image of the park and the neighbourhood as a whole, and definitely sputtered out a ‘Kids these days’ kind of line. All of a sudden Susan started laughing, and told me to go outside and play with Cheri, that I should be having fun instead of gossiping with her. She was wrong, I was having fun already. See – Old Soul.
A similar situation came up this weekend when Jillian and I were at a baby shower – and she saw the whole conversation and suitably berated me about it afterwards.
There was a very happy G’Ma at the party, holding one of her youngest grandsons, surrounded by a slew of other grandchildren. To say that she looked proud would be the understatement of the century. As is the case with a group of women, we were huddled around the baby cooing and talking about how cute and perfect he was. Then we started to discuss how good baby’s smell. Jillian postulated that might be because of the baby style soap products, which is likely a big part of it. I then jumped in and said that it’s the smell of a very young newborn that I like the most, which has nothing to do with soap. I continued my theory stating that that I think there is some sort of Chemical reaction to that smell that triggers Mothering instincts and makes you naturally want to care for a Newborn. Logical, no?
G’Ma then stated “So was this your first child?”
Jillian started laughing. I think my eyes popped out of my head and my jaw hit the floor – Nancy, with child? Most definitely not! Apparently I sounded too knowledgeable about the subject to just be a casual observer. I blame the ‘Old Soul’ complex, I can carry on a conversation about anything and do it convincingly.
Next time the subject comes up, I’m just going to say ‘Babies smell nice, just like puppies and kittens’ and leave it at that.
nancyfrancis 