'Silver Lining' Rose

Simmy listened to the whole forty minutes of the February 12th speaker at Riverwood. In a way, the topic was about self- esteem, bad esteem, good esteem, and God esteem.

A story of ice follies but not a lot of frolics came to mind... Simmy had decided to take a job working for an area of construction that was more of the finishing end of building... the install after the dust settles , so to speak. One of the women , Darling , had been a Olympic competitor in the 1940's. Darling presented well. Simmy assumed that any woman over sixty who has competed at Olympic level would be very secure in 'who she is.'

Simmy was wrong. One day , Darling had looked at Simmy and said , 'Do you like your own company?'

That was an odd question so Simmy was still thinking about it when Darling continued , '... cause , I was thinking you should keep your own company.'

Now, it was the little  feral look in her beady eyes and the thin lips compressed into a faux smile that really let Simmy know that Darling was not really very darling at all. She was afraid of the possible competition. Simmy had been hired on as part of the sales team. Simmy quickly termed it the 'snake pit.'

The little team of vipers were so busy pitting one woman against another, against another and so on and so on... that it was a highly stressful atmosphere.

One day Darlingwhowasnotsodarling said something that was so insulting to Simmy that some of the other women were actually fairly shocked themselves.

The next day was a day off forDarling. Simmy's phone rang first thing in the morning and she answered professionally just to hear, 'This is Darling. Shh! Don't say my name. I don't want the other girls to know I'm calling you.'

'Alright,' Simmy had replied cautiously.

'I want to apologize for what I said yesterday...'

It was a moment that Simmy had worked hard to get to... purely through modeling... the easiest and yet, most difficult, method to bring about change in people. 

A silver lining rose upon that day... but the sad part of the apology from Darling  was that she thought it was a character weakness to apologize... or did she?