Given the right time under certain circumstances people have a high level of trust to open up themselves and share their personal life her/history to strangers. You might want to say:
"Not everybody is ready to open up to strangers. I'm a very private person."
"Hear me out, let me tell you this.........."
On Saturday morning, I woke up with the sound of wind smacking the bedroom window. It was kind of the day when you wished you had a manual underneath a stack of other manuals in a drawer where you could look up the chapter, say: Chapter Four: HOW TO MAKE A DECISION ON A RAINY SATURDAY MORNING WHEN THE OTHER YOU TELLS YOU STAY HOME IN YOUR JAMMIES AND YOU TELL YOU, GO TO THE MEMOIR WRITING WORKSHOP THAT YOU'VE BEEN LOOKING FORWARD TO.
What a long title for a chapter, but you get my drift.
Anyho, after a mug of chocolate raspberry coffee and my famous fluffy pancake (I heard somebody's snort out there), I braved myself out in a pouring rain in my raggedy yellow rain jacket and black rubber boots.
One thing I hate wearing rubber boots even though they keep my feet dry and warm, is the noise they make when I walk. Pfflooofff, pffloooff, pffloooff. Perhaps I should've put on a fleece socks next time. That might eliminate the pffloooff, pffloooff noise.
When I got off the train at Central Square, I walked up the stairs to the ground level,.By this time I knew I had to take a cab to get to the site. The wind thought she was funny, she blew in all directions. The rain must've had a headache trying to catch up with the winds. I'm telling you rain, you got to stand up to the wind. I gave the cabdriver the address.
"It's only around the corner, meez."
"I know, but I don't feel like walking in this weather."
When people tell you , it's only around the corner or it's only a block or two, don't expect you would get to your final destination after you get to that corner or after you walk a block or two. Most of the time you have to pass two, three or even four corners before you get to your corner. Unless you are a walker or you are not running late for an appointment, that would be another story.
The cabdriver dropped me in front of the Women Center, a gray and white double story house. I climbed up four flights of stairs and pushed the door opened.A woman in a small office greeted me and pointed to the sign on my left. I pushed another door that opened up into a living room, and there was Julia Thacker , our writing instructor for the workshop.
She sat on the faded moss colored sofa facing the door. Two stacks of papers piled neatly on a low table in front of her. I greeted her and we introduced ourselves. She introduced me to two women sat on the straight back chairs near the fire place. We shook hands and exchanged stiffed smiles. By 11.00 am, all 12 seats were taken.
Ms. Thacker asked us to introduced ourselves and what we hope to get out of this five hours workshop.
Some of us took less than 40 seconds to spit out about ourselves, but a few of the women wore the expressions, I can't wait to get this shit out of my system, and shared their heartbreaks and disappointments of getting rejection letters.
One of the women lives in the house Sylvia Plath used to live on Beacon Hill. A woman in early 70's has rejection letters all over her wall. I read somewhere about a writer who decorated the rejection letters on her bedroom walls before her books got published. Now, that was motivation.
If the instructor didn't interfere in the most polite way, "Okay, lets get started now," some of us would probably have spilled out more than they intended to.
Or perhaps people are more comfortable to share something they usually don't share it with people they know. By the end of the day everybody in the room would go on separate ways.
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