Mrs McTwig

I met a chappie following an am dram performance I was involved in; he was in the audience and at the end as I was on my way out of the hall he stopped me. This was the, not verbatim, but pretty close conversation. (The last two lines are verbatim).

Him: You were absolutely the best thing in the show, we really enjoyed it.

Me: Thank you so much, how kind of you to say so!

Him: (another performer) was also good, but you were fab.

Me:  Oh thank you, that’s really nice,  I’m glad you enjoyed it.  Please come and see (another play) that we’re doing in June!

Him: The play by (that playwright), your company is doing that?

Me: Yes, I’m in it and I’ll be great!

Him: The other thing I like about you is your modesty. 

Chappie exits left.

Now then. 

I spoke to Mr McTwig about this and explained that I could see how the last thing I said might sound “immodest”, but really – REALLY – that wasn’t my intention. McTwig knows me of course so understands that.  I said that I can’t remember anyone before having that sort of reaction to anything I said which he said should tell me something about the situation.  And he said (before he told me to shut up about it) that he thought that stalking off was a huge over reaction and generally someone would take that as a joke. So did the four other people I’ve spoken to about it, so I suppose that’s reassuring.

I’ve been really agonising over this. Agonising. I was so enchanted by someone stopping me to tell me something like that, it was so nice of him. And now this chappie is going about his life thinking I’m a dickhead. (Of course he’s probably not thinking about it at all now, but you know what I mean).

But then, he doesn’t know me at all. So he can’t be expected to know whether I said that because I’m a dickhead, or that the intention behind what I said was “Yes, I’m in it and hopefully I’ll be great in that too”, but it came out all wrong because I was tired, my friend was waiting for me to drop me home and (this is the real problem to be perfectly honest) I’d had two glasses of wine really quickly after the performance so my brain was not really connecting with my words. 

This is such a small thing, but it bothers me and I wish it had gone differently. There can be a huge gap between intention and action. When these things don’t align we hope to have the chance to explain ourselves. But he didn’t give me a chance, and we don’t know each other, so I can’t do that. I suppose that all I can do is make sure that another time, I drink my wine at a more ladylike pace.