As others see us

“To see ourselves as others see us.” A wise man once said that this was the best way to see the truth about ourselves. (No, ma’am, it wasn’t me, but thanks for the thought.)

As is often the case with these things, it was almost me. I had the thought but the other fellow wrote it down. Or, as a contemporary of Mark Twain complained to a reporter of the day, “I knowed jist as many stories as he did. Only difference was, he writ ’em down.”

The Brier gave us a wonderful chance to see ourselves as those others did. We could look at them and see ourselves reflected as in a mirror. The only problem with that little idea is that the people doing the reflecting are mainlanders, come from-awayers, Upalongers. All that what they are is not their fault.

Let me offer you an analogy. You’ve been in those fun houses in amusement parks where you go into halls and your image is thrown back at you from many mirrors of different sizes at different angles, and broken and cracked, so that what you get reflected back at you are distortions of what you are?

Well, that’s what happens when you try to see yourself as others from across the Gulf see you — or words to that effect. The main reason is that, where we are concerned, all them are cracked.

Don’t get me wrong — I really like mainlanders. Met a lot them when I was living on the mainland. One of their universities gave me a degree, although they don’t like to talk about it. Don’t know why.

I did get invited to leave after my first year, but made the Dean’s scholarship list in my last — one of the great comebacks in the history of scholastic comebacks. Of course, my brother-in-law and me parting company as roommates after the first year may have had something to do with it, especially since the same thing happened to him. Pure coincidence.

People from Upalong have strange ideas about their “down east” cousins. I’m sure I told you about the follow I was having lunch with in my rehab facility cafeteria one day. We got to chatting, like you would, and he asked me where I was from. Being sort of proud of it, I said, “Newfoundland.”

“Right,” he said, “down east.” He thought a moment. “Down east, eh. Say, I have a friend in Moncton named Joe Leblanc. You must have run into him.”

I told him that sadly I had not. Must have travelled in different circles, I said. He agreed that was probably it. Then he had a question.

“Where do you go to get the bridge to Newfoundland?” (I swear this is the Lord’s own truth.)

“North Sydney,” I said, without missing a beat.

“Always wanted to go to Newfoundland,” he allowed. “Is that a very long bridge?”

“Oh yes, they say it’s about 180 miles both ways.” Might have missed a beat on that one.

He looked at me while I looked down at my soup. “Come on, Newf! That bridge is not that long, is it?”

“Only over,” I said. “It’s twice as long on the way back.”

At that point he up and left and never came back. Avoided me in the cafeteria from then on. OH said I should apologize to him for making fun of him to his face, but I didn’t agree. The man said the Newfoundland Nword to my face. I would have to look some stun to see myself as that fellow saw me.

Another chap told me in that same cafeteria one night that we had really strange place names “over there,” like “Herring Neck and Turks Gut.” A little while later I asked him where he was from. He answered without hesitation: “Medicine Hat.”

I have to admit to having mixed feelings about having myself equated with the brawling hordes of George Street. Cabot Tower and Bonavista and The Rooms be damned. If you have not gotten into a fight on George Street, you haven’t experienced real Newfoundland culture — or, “culchah” in Toronto, New York and Paris. Isn’t it time to explode that myth? George Street is just a nice place to go to have a quiet drink on a Saturday night.

I do have to say that the commentators at the Brier seemed to see us in a very favourable light, and kept saying so. The photography was beautiful, too, as were the wonderful tourism promotional videos.

And it really doesn’t matter whose eyes we see ourselves through.

In our own eyes, we are a pretty good lot.

People from Upalong have strange ideas about their “down east” cousins.