Friday saw a reprise of my role as mystery guest at the University of Botswana, this time in a 3rd-year class on environmental and business reporting. But this time, to my dismay, a female student gasped when I revealed my age. A guy then piped up, “Wow! My father didn’t even have me as a thought in his head then!”
Those kinds of responses can really inspire optimism and joie de vie in a guest speaker, not to mention sweat. I found myself exclaiming, “But I’m young at heart! I kayak. I ski. I cycle. I hike mountains.” It didn’t do any good. I was a geezer for the record books, one foot toward the Metamucil, the other toward the grave. Like Nora Ephron and her neck book, I have this thing about age, as do many of my women friends who are established in that decade known as the “new 30s,” and you know who you are. Friday, then, marked a setback in the fight against the clock. Weep for me, my allies at Saks and various offices that dispense magic potions. We hold these beauty secrets sacred….(Are there refunds?)
Steve Magagnini of The Bee gets what they call in South Africa “a massive shout-out” (praise) for having been a huge help in coaching me on how he teaches at the Univ. of California, Davis. I had experience as a mystery guest in his “Professional Reporting: Explain, Entertain and Relieve Pain” class in the fall, so I learned the drill, thanks to him, and adapted it to these audiences. I think it worked great. I could tell they were engaged. Not one dozed. About 25 students were in the first class, and we divided them into groups. The groups got to work on coming up with questions together, then we opened it up for business, like a press conference, and I kept track of how many questions groups were asking. (Prizes await winners next week, but obviously I get the chump prize for being old.) I can’t complain about their questions. They were lively, probing, respectful, sometimes personal, right on target.
But I’m left now with the profiles of me that they had to write on a 20-minute deadline, and I am somewhat baffled. By one account I majored in art at Harvard. By another my favorite car is a limo (Where did that come from? As Bill Bishop and Julie Ardery in Texas know, that is not the case after our experience in a limo before the Bob Dylan concert. Au contraire. Going through a drive-through Wendy’s window in a stretch mortified us. Our bon vivant pal Joel Pett, the editorial cartoonist, who paid for the flashy ride -- do you notice how I’m practicing my French for my upcoming hostess job?-- was having a ball. But I digress.)
One student said of me, she is “not married and does not have children; this is probably the reason she is a well accomplished woman.”
Another wrote, “On the lighter side of her life, Ms. Henson enjoys the fried mopane worm and beef stew, if it means going out.” Amen, sister.
And another: “Educated in the University of Wake and having been an editor for ten years and winning the Pulitzer award, it is undisputable and undoubtable that this lady is indeed a world class material.” Nice ring to it, that one.
One thing they all jumped on was the question about my biggest fear. I blurted out, “Snakes.” Almost every student mentioned that fear in the profiles. But in the light of day, I feel I let them down. It was an insufficient answer, woefully insufficient. I would be justified in dropping a mail bag of fears on their wobbly student desks. Snakes wouldn’t even be at the top. Closed spaces; stuck elevators with me in them; grizzlies; mountain lions; scorpions; crocodiles; angry Cape Buffalo that would require me to lie down flat on my stomach and play dead so they can’t scoop me up to kill me; driving over that long, monumentally high bridge across the Chesapeake Bay; falling newspaper stock prices; singing in public; my pet cat Dauphine on a bad day; going 33 mph, white-knuckled, down a mountain on my bike; a cheap half-slip with the elastic band about to give way; Rice-a-Roni – now, those things scare me. And did I mention 4-inch-long thorns in elephant dung?
I was pleased by a quote most students paraphrased and got exactly right: “She said that she would like Batswana (people of Botswana) to remember her as an American who learned and respected their culture and made friendships with them.”
I’m going to enjoy getting to know these students. There’s no doubt about that or the many friendships that lie ahead. Just let me grab my sensible shoes, a can of Ensure for the road and start shuffling my arthritic legs back to the classroom to begin the adventure. A votre sante! Meet you back at the counter de beaute on the flip side.
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