A Preview Without the Popcorn

You find out a lot about people when you’re trapped with them indoors for three days.

Last week I attended an iPhone photography workshop at the Madeline Island School of Art in Wisconsin. Most of the class had been photographing for years and were excited to study with top instructors. Let’s just say a small number of participants barely knew how to operate their phones.

Within a very short time, I had a preview of who I did and didn’t want to be as I aged.

The first morning we went on a great shoot at a state park. Four or five people monopolized the instructors so thoroughly it was almost impossible to ask a question. That afternoon we edited photos, and the same small group monopolized the class again.

At dinner, several of us were excited to get out of the classroom and looked forward to the boat tour to the caves the next day.

When I woke up the next morning, I smelled something strange. I opened my cabin door, and the smoke was so thick I could barely see my car thirty feet away. Canadian wildfire smoke had rolled in overnight and swallowed the island whole. The boat trip to the Apostle Islands and Devil’s Cave, the whole reason half of us had come, was canceled. For three straight days we sat inside a classroom instead. I put on an N95 mask and kept my rescue inhaler within reach.

The week became a preview, a character study of how different people choose to age. These are notes to mysel, but you’re welcome to chime in with your own examples.

One woman treated every instructor like her primary care physician. Before they could explain how to crop a photo, they knew about her hip replacements, her blood pressure, and exactly how tiny her thyroid pill was.

I’ll admit I was the first one to ask where every bathroom was located at each stop. I’m not above discussing bodily functions. But there’s a difference between asking where the restroom is and describing your colonoscopy to a man trying to explain photography.

Next, the woman who took multiple calls in the classroom while the instructor was talking. There’s a door. Use it. That was the first appearance of my Resting Bitch Face Death Stare.

I made the mistake of picking running mates on day one. On our first drive, I learned about their surgeries, their careers, their grandchildren, and that one of them had sixty thousand documented ancestors going back to Jamestown.

That same car ride is where a woman said only hillbillies pronounced Missouri with an “E” and not an “UH.” I said, “Well, thanks for calling’ my family hillbillies.” She apologized later, then asked if my family was from the Ozarks.

“No,” I said. “We’re from the bootheel. We’re more like river rats.”

Eventually, I developed a system for dealing with the female monopolizer. I’d wait nearby until she finally paused for breath, then step in and ask my question. One afternoon she started to move back toward the instructor while I was still getting help. I looked up and gave her the full Resting Bitch Face Death Stare. She took one look, thought better of it, and walked away. It may not have been my finest moment, but I’d paid for the workshop too.

Then there was the eighty-five-year-old man who kept fumbling through how to add an app to his phone. He wasn’t embarrassed by what he didn’t know. He lit up every time something clicked, like he’d just been let in on a secret the rest of us already knew. His enthusiasm was contagious.

And there was the woman with purple hair. She rocked it. She walked with a cane, had a giant personality, and worked circles around most of us. She never complained. She just kept learning. Her photography was stellar.

I want to be her.

Somewhere in that smoke-filled classroom, this stopped being about photography. It became a preview, and not the kind with popcorn. I watched people dominate conversations without noticing anyone else waiting to speak. I watched them tell the same stories on repeat because there weren’t many new ones left to tell. I watched health become a person’s identity rather than just a fact of life.

I realized I wasn’t just watching them. I was looking at reminders for my future self. Stay curious. Keep collecting new stories. Don’t mistake your health for your identity. Leave room for other people in the conversation.

The week that was supposed to be about taking photos became an opportunity to see how people choose to age.

Growing older is inevitable. Becoming someone people enjoy growing older with is a choice.

If you need help developing your version of the Resting Bitch Face Death Stare, call me. I have practice.