By Dana Stovern
October 23, 2017
Delta, Colorado
This chance experience happened in one of our local grocery stores as the United States was heaving with the changes that waves of #MeToo justifiably brought during the autumn of 2017. I felt so removed from the storm of the movement while living in the remote North Fork of the Gunnison River on Colorado’s Western Slope. Yet, I felt so connected, so affected by this wave of uprising that held deep meaning to me given my family history of incest and all the minor and major experiences of workplace misogyny in my life. Finally, women had a clear platform, a clear way to speak up and say #MeToo! Finally, a conversation was taking place, even if that conversation was raging. At the peak of this national conversation, my life was interrupted with “Oregano.” I shared my perspective of this comical experience with my Facebook audience.
Last week was a long and intense week. I’m sure you can relate. Astrological intensity. Personal life intensity. Professional intensity. National news intensity. It was a bit much.
By Friday, my emotional bandwidth was shot. That means my ability to respond to my fellow human beings in a patient and compassionate way was on a short leash.
That’s about when a bearded, booted, jean-clad elderly gentleman wearing a beat up cowboy hat in the local Delta, Colorado, City Market seemed to suddenly spot me on his radar from across the vegetable section and gyrate, off-kilter, directly toward me in a scarecrow windmill style. It seemed all his appendages gyrated in a radical swirling motion. Somehow, I didn’t seem to be able to move — I was like a bug on a windshield as his windmilling moved rapidly across the store to me.
Nearly instantly, my typical compassionate bandwidth went out the window, and my antenna-like radar shot through the roof while the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. When he arrived mere feet from me, the first words out of his mouth were, “You look smarter than me!” The first thoughts that rolled through my head echoed in shades of the #MeToo movement that had been raging through headlines on my computer and my social media accounts. Even so, I simultaneously reminded myself that this person, from rustic cowboy appearances, probably wasn’t on social media. His social media was probably horses or fields or cattle. His shorthand was probably noting how much feed was left for grazing in a field, how to crack enough ice open on a water trough so animals could drink in January, how to gauge preparing for a storm on the horizon to secure feed and animals.