by Norma Best Boucher

“Hello. My name is Norma. I am an English major and a literary snob.”

If there were such groups as Literary Snobs Anonymous, I would stand before their podium addressing my captured audience saying those exact words to my fellow literary snobs. Then, when they finally gave me the proverbial shepherd’s hook to drag me from my pulpit, I would confess my deepest, darkest truth: “I also love mysteries.”

As a high school English teacher, I basically had to prod gently my students to get their insights about the books I had assigned for them to read.

Today I belong to a book club. Some months I like the book. Some months I don’t like the book. Every month, though, I enjoy animated discussions with the very intelligent, very diverse and very assertive women in the group. They all have their own opinions and express them clearly, coherently, and, sometimes, even eloquently.

In my own defense I must explain that I was at the mercy of English teachers throughout my high school and college years. All required reading books were from the classics. I loved the classics.

As a teacher I also introduced my students to the classics. Some students may say that I tortured them with the classics, but I always assured them that the book titles, the characters and even the quoted texts would remain with them throughout their lives. Like it or not.

In my own everyday life, I am constantly reminded of classic book characters and their quotes. Whenever I see a man rubbing his hands together, I am reminded of Uriah Heep, the antagonist in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield.

Who can forget the revengeful phrase “One down” in Alexandre Dumas’ novel The Count of Monte Cristo, or the quote “All for one and one for all” in Dumas’ The Three Musketeers?

Can we forget the characters and lessons learned from Silas in Silas Marner, Huck in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, Jo March and her sisters in Little Women, or Jane Eyre and Cathy and Heathcliff from the two Bronte sisters? I think not.

Of course, there’s always Shakespeare’s famous quotes: “Take thee to a nunnery” from Hamlet to Ophelia, “Out damned spot” from Lady Macbeth, “A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse” from Richard III, Hamlet’s Polonius’s “To thine own self be true,” and the unforgettable Julius Caesar’s dying recognition “Et Tu, Brute?”

I cannot be the only one who remembers and frankly relishes these great works of literature. Highfalutin they may be but unforgettable they remain, at least to me.

I knew a man for 50 years. We tolerated each other. I am sure that he never recognized one single word of wisdom I may have offered, and, to tell the truth, in those five decades I only gleaned one sentence of wisdom from him.

He was in his mid-70s at the time. Someone asked him to attend a function. He thought silently for a few moments and then literally thought out loud, “I don’t have that much time left to waste.”

I stored in my memory that tidbit of wisdom. Now, whenever I start reading a new book, I ask myself whether I am enjoying the book or whether by reading this particular book I am wasting precious time. Sometimes book and time decisions are made just like that.

My book tastes and time decisions may sometimes appear to be old-fashioned, but the modern day me is sitting right here right now writing this declaration or confession, if you will, wearing a newly-purchased tee shirt that reads, “That’s what I do. I read books, and I know things.”

Back to the original question, “Am I a literary snob?”

In Shakespeare’s words, “Egads!”

In my own words, “I hope so.”

by Norma Best Boucher

We ran down the roadway to the Old Orchard Beach Ball Park. We were a little late because of the traffic, but that didn’t make any difference. His golden voice filled the air, and each perfect note sent a shiver through me.

That was the first and the last time I was to hear Roy Orbison, live. An hour of songs such as Oh, Pretty Woman and Crying was only the beginning. The next two hours were filled with Surfin’ USA, California Girls, and the Good Vibrations of the Beach Boys. This was definitely the best birthday present I’d ever received, and I was going to enjoy every note of it.

The outfield was mobbed with students of the ’60s. The crowd moved in time with the music producing a wave of bodies and minds, with dreamy-eyed adults reliving a memory and the children holding their hands and sitting on their shoulders, creating a memory.

Woodstock – Eat your heart out!

I wanted to move up closer to the stage, but my husband was convinced we’d never make it. He stayed behind while I pushed my way through the crowd with a plastered smile on my face and an “Excuse me” every two or three feet. To say I’m not easily deterred is an understatement.

Twice in the ’60s, while still a college student, I took five hours to push through a crowd of 100,000 screaming college students in the infield of Kentucky Downs and managed to see the favorites, Kauai King and Proud Clarion, race through the finish line to win the Kentucky Derby. I hadn’t even placed a bet. I would do no less for the Beach Boys.

They were older, and so was I, but their timeless music took me back to an era when the words “age” and “worry” were not in my vocabulary. After a few songs, I, too, was dreamy-eyed. Then the loudness of the music hurt my ears and stomach, and soon I was singing, dancing, and waving my arms with wild abandon.

Oh – youth!

My husband, usually the dancer of us two, sat in a bleacher seat with his feet up and just enjoyed. I could see him in the distance, smiling, reliving a time only he could know. A five-year-old boy, standing on a seat a short distance away from him, gyrated to the music. Totally self-absorbed, my husband and the boy neither knew nor cared that the other existed.

Sometimes, when I’m alone in my car, I play my CDs, and Roy Orbison and the Beach Boys take me back to that concert and to the ’60s when age and worry didn’t exist and when music and life could be described with “I like it…It has a good beat.”

A young girl on her first day of school. (AI generated)

by Norma Best Boucher

At first, I was embarrassed when I couldn’t remember this teacher’s name, but then I realized that teachers’ names are not written on their students’ foreheads, but what they do for their students is indelibly written on their minds.

I was going through adolescence. I hated the world, and I was sure the world hated me. My arms and legs were too long for my already too skinny body, and my hair, which had always been worn in tight side braids, was now long and stringy. I even bit my fingernails. I was too self-absorbed to notice that every other young girl looked and felt the same as I.

I sat in a corner back seat in class and saw everyone and everything that went on in the room. No one ever saw me, except, of course, when I took that long walk to the front of the room. I just knew everyone was staring at me. I did anything to avoid that walk.

I wanted to be somebody. I wanted to be special. I wanted to do something that no one else could do, and I wanted to do it well. The only individual things we ever did in class to be recognized were spelling bees, reading aloud, and playing the flash card math game. All of us could spell and read, and all the math game ever did was to prove to me and to the rest of the class that I was a math dunce.

One day, hope sprang eternal. Our class had been chosen to do a special project, and the teacher needed volunteers. Up went my hand when suddenly I heard the words “mural” and “pastels.”

Oh, no, just my luck. The only thing I did worse than math flash cards was art.

I quickly lowered my hand but not fast enough. The next words I heard were, “and Norma can be the flower girl.”

Oh, God, why me?

The mural was to have three sections. The first was to be a picture of the Waterville Savings Bank, where the mural would ultimately hang. The second section was to be a busy city street, drawn in perspective. The third was to be a friendly neighborhood setting with houses and children playing.

My job was simple, or so it seemed. All I had to do was make multi-colored dots in four rectangular flower boxes.

I worked on those boxes for what seemed forever. Every spare minute I had, I worked on those flowers, but they always looked like multi-colored dots in rectangular boxes. I erased and erased and erased again.

One day, I must have looked especially depressed. She had given me the easiest job on the entire mural, and I couldn’t even do that right. Finally, the teacher approached me.

Maybe she remembered being a young girl with long, skinny limbs, stringy hair, and bitten nails herself, or maybe she knew that the next year I would start to fill out and begin to like myself and the world. She gave me her “we can do this together” smile and asked me what my favorite flowers were.

That was easy. I liked red roses because my father gave them to my mother every year for their anniversary. I liked the pink bleeding hearts that were in front of my best friend’s house. I liked the lavender lilacs we picked on Memorial Day, even though they made me sneeze, and the lemon-colored marigolds in our neighbor’s garden that I could see from my bedroom window. Best of all, though, I liked the purple and blue pansies because they had smiling black faces.

“Draw those,” she said.

“Every time you make a dot,” she explained, “remember you’re drawing red roses, pink bleeding hearts, lavender lilacs, lemon-colored marigolds, and purple and blue pansies with smiling black faces.”

That was it. When I drew dots, they looked like dots, so all I had to do was draw flowers, and they’d look like flowers.

When each student finished his/her job on the mural, the teacher always made a point of interrupting the class for the students to recognize each artist.

I remember as if it were yesterday. When I finished my window boxes, the teacher said, “Everyone, look. Norma has finished her flowers. Aren’t they the most beautiful flowers you’ve ever seen?”

At last, I was somebody.

I literally floated through the remaining days of school in anticipation of the unveiling of the mural at the Waterville Savings Bank. I rushed my parents to the bank with such excitement they must have thought I was a young Van Gogh. When I showed them what I had done, they looked at each other with questioning expressions: “All this hullabaloo for that?”

All they saw were multi-colored dots in boxes.

I looked at their puzzled faces, and I knew they didn’t understand. I saw four flower boxes filled with red roses, pink bleeding hearts, lavender lilacs, lemon-colored marigolds, and purple and blue pansies with smiling black faces.

They didn’t know – they couldn’t know – but somehow that didn’t matter. What was really important was that I knew…and she knew.

by Norma Best Boucher

I sat in my car in the parking lot eating a candy bar enjoying the pounding rain both assailing and cleaning my car.

I had not planned this scenario. My plan was to buy my favorite sandwich, go to the beach, relax and enjoy the sound of the waves.

My trip to the beach had begun well enough, but before I could even open the paper bag to get out my sandwich, I heard screaming from the beachgoers down the shoreline south of me.

I was concentrating so hard on the reaction of the people that I did not notice what was actually happening.

Then I saw the phenomenon that was scaring them.

Although I was sitting in sunshine, coming up from the south was a fast-moving wall of rain. The other beachgoers scrambled unsuccessfully to outrun the downpour, and by the time I realized that I had to run if I were to escape, I was in the middle of the deluge.

I grabbed my bottle of water and the paper bag holding my sandwich and ran.

Why I ran, I don’t know. Running? Walking? Neither mattered – I was already drenched.

I reached my car and unlocked the driver’s side door. I tossed in my water bottle, but when I checked out the paper bag holding my sandwich, I realized that all there was left was the top of the bag that I had been holding in my hand. The bottom part of the bag was gone along with my favorite sandwich.

I grabbed a beach towel I kept in the back seat, wrapped my body and sank dishearteningly in the driver’s seat.

Meanwhile, other cars drove into the parking lot to wait out the storm.

I sat in my car sulking. I had planned this day off from work, this day at the beach, for what seemed like forever.

I leaned my head against the headrest and closed my eyes. The towel warmed my body, and, gradually, the battering rain became soothing music. I remembered a candy bar that I had in my backpack. The seagulls would enjoy my sandwich, but I would enjoy my candy bar.

I heard loud thunder and watched staccato lightning. This was another world – God’s world – threatening but enlivening.

I was out in the elements, but I was not afraid. I was in the cocoon of my car – safe and sound.

by Norma Best Boucher

Listen up! You are the first to know. I am “officially” eccentric. I can see the raised eyebrows of the people who do not know me and the rolling of the eyes of the people who do know me. For the new people, just how eccentric am I? For my friends, I have crossed the line from oddity to eccentricity—there is no stopping me now.

The oddity stage started when I was a little girl living on a street with all boys. I thought I was a pretty normal tomboy, but in later years I met an older woman whose family had lived on my street who told me that her husband used to refer to me as “the character.” At first, I was insulted, but then I took the name as being my own person, which is evidently still true to this day.

Most of my family members were eventually involved in the business world, actually owning various businesses. I was the English major with a vivid imagination always writing or telling stories. We were all encouraged to be what we wanted to be, not what anyone else expected us to be. What freedom —to be accepted for what we were. I remember doing something that a non-family member thought odd, but my cousins stood up for me and responded with understanding, “Oh, that’s just Norma.”
Acceptance felt good.

Let’s see, now, eccentricity. I have discovered Crocs, the shoes not the reptile. Although there are many new stylish choices, I enjoy the original round-toed, holey clogs. I was at an appointment the other day with a young lady taking my blood pressure. She saw my Crocs (I was wearing my bright pink Crocs at the time.) and mentioned that there were many new styles.

“I know,” I said, “but I like the ugly ones.”

From the expression on her face, I could tell that she didn’t appreciate eccentricity.

I own many colorful pairs of Crocs, purchased at sale prices at a local discount clothing store. I like to choose shockingly bright colors that might ordinarily clash with my outfit, but by being eccentric, the colors merely stand out in total eccentricity.

About 20 years ago I discovered elasticized waist bands. Although my weight didn’t seem to change, my actual figure did, hence the elasticized waist bands. I discovered well-known national brand-named jeans with elasticized waist bands and was happy for many years. As the years progressed, I did have to hunt for those jeans. I went from one national department store to a different national department store until finally the last national department store closed all of its stores near me. I was forced to search online but to no avail.

I never gave up searching, though, and finally I found my jeans in not only dark blue denim but also in my beloved light blue denim and on sale. I just kept clicking on the links until I was into a company that only had stores in the northwest of the US of A. Then I noticed the name of the store. Let’s just say that the word “farm” was in the store name. I have nothing against farming. I have had my share of gardens and enjoyed them, but to buy my well-known national brand-named jeans from a farm supply store? That did it. Either I could be insulted, or I could be eccentric. I chose to be eccentric. I was nearly there anyway, so why not?

I was sulking about the “farm” thing and finally shared with my friends my dilemma.

“Go for it,” they all said. “Wear your wildest colored Crocs and add a bandana as an accessory.”

That sounded reasonable, maybe even stylish. No one had to know the store had the word “farm” in its name. I began to rationalize the situation. Farm stores sell animal feed. Horses eat feed, and horses live on ranches. I’ll just substitute the word “ranch” for “farm.” I went right online and ordered two pairs of “ranch” jeans, one in each color.

I am in my 70s now, but as I walk out my front door dressed in my bright red Crocs, my paisley-designed red bandana in my right pants pocket with just a hint of color showing from the corner of the bandana, and my new dark navy “ranch” jeans, I am the 10-year-old “character” of my youth going out to play with my cousins.

“Oh, that’s just Norma,” I hear them say.

Yes.

Acceptance feels good.