“KEEP MYSELF-TO-MYSELF” WOMAN

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20953, 4 November 1939, Page 16 (Supplement)

“KEEP MYSELF-TO-MYSELF” WOMAN

Break a Lifetime’s Habit of Being Oysters

When you see your neighbour in her front garden, when you and she come in from your shopping expedition at the same time, do you speak? Or are you one of the many million women who keep themselves to themselves? How many of your neighbours know more of your house than the pretty net curtains that hang in the windows and the hall stand that Shows when the door is opened? If some one in your road or block of flats was in trouble, would they come to you, sure that you’d help? And surely you would help. You are that kind of person. You’d be glad to help . . . Yes, but being that kind of person is no good unless the others know it, too. What you are inside yourself is not enough. If the flower shop has a blank window, no flowers in it, no words to tell what they sell, how can you know to shop there? The woman who is not friendly in the way of smiles and words is the shop with the shutters up. No one can benefit by what she has inside, however rich her store. No one goes to a stranger for help except in the last extremity. “I’d do anything for someone who needed my help,” you may say. Your neighbours do need it. They are often lonely and, in days of crisis, they are frightened. How can they show their heart to a woman who has never passed the time of day with them, never chatted nor asked about the baby, never patted the dog and said what a knowing expression he’s got? In the country it is different. For one thing, there are the . Women’s Institutes to bring pebple together end make them feel friendly. I walked along a country lane on the first day of my holiday. A woman passing called out “Nice evening, isn’t it? Feels like rain in the air, though.” That is all that is needed in the towns to change us from becoming a tight-lipped nation of people thrust in on ourselves into a friendly people who live and work side by side. “Passing the time of day” is all we need to start that drawing-out-of the shell which means in a pereonal way better health and happiness for us, and, in a national way, a more united and enlightened nation. There are few clubs where women meet as men do, no “snug” where anecdotes are told about the famous “characters” and “cards” of the neighbourhood, where the news is debated. No, but there are the shops to which you and I go every day to buy. Do you ever pass a remark with the other woman waiting a turn with pram and basket? Or, because the other woman may not answer, won’t you risk the humiliation of looking foolish? Whereas, if that does occur, what has happened is that for so long no one has said the casual friendly word that the other woman missed the split second for replying. “It’s not a “technique” that makes for friendliness. It’s goodness of heart. Not to make friends is a sign of some hardness inside. “No, no,” you say, “not that. Only

shyness. I just couldn’t bring myself to.” Most Shyness is Vanity Well, then, let’s admit that it is vanity. Most shyness is vanity. Fear of not shining, or doing the wrong thing, prevents women from visiting, talking, playing tennis, playing cards, joining in generally. Only we won't admit it is vanity. (I’m like that over tennis and cards, so I know.) Do you offer to lend a paper in the train? Do you greet the policeman on his dull and monotonous beat? Do you sometimes give a cake to the boy who brings round your papers (rewarded, believe me, by having dry papers on wet days). Yes, you may do those things with people who will keep their distance and yet you may refuse to make friends with your neighbours . . . because you fear the spreading of gossip . . . because they may not keep their distance (meaning your distance, of course). Because you might say just something more than you meant. All close, firm reasons, all justifiable. None of them truly generous. Or perhaps you don’t say that. “I’ve no time when shopping to waste on gossip.” “I have too much to do to go galivanting. I’ve my family to think of.” But, in fact, the family would be in a much better position if you made friends, if you went out and about instead of shutting yourself inside the home circle. Goodness and effort spent on your family is really and truly only goodness spent on yourself, for our families are only extensions of ourselves, no more. The mother who won’t have strangers inside the home—“ Aren’t we enough for you, after all we’ve done?” she asks—is shutting out the warm world, shutting her family in with herself against its warmth. Enjoy the Fruits of Sociability Break the habit of the enclosed home as quickly as possible. When you read of women giving up their nice little houses in new suburbs, how often it is the unfriendliness of neighbours that has driven them nearly silly where there are no street diversions as in the heart of a town. When you hear of quarrels between neighbours, it is because no friendly word has been passed between housewife and housewife. It’s a question of habit, this friendliness, and it begins not with words but with smiles. I know a woman who, through good fortune and ill (very ill at times) has always had people come forward to help her—friends, acquaintances and complete strangers. And why? Because she always smiles her rather shy smile on friends and on strangers, too. When the shops keep her waiting and time presses for cooking the dinner, she still smiles. She it is who gets the best meat, the best fruit. Can we break a lifetime’s habit of being oysters, of not smiling at people, strangers or friends? Can we begin to pass the time of day, compliment the neighbour on her children, pat the dog? Can we, in fact, be generous people? If ever crisis comes it is the friendly souls who will be the prepared and the calm ones, to whom we shall all turn.