What I wish I’d said — one more example

In a couple of posts in the past*, I’ve written about those times we all have when we think of just the right thing to say in a given situation — sometime later. Here’s another such experience. It didn’t come to mind either time I addressed this topic previously. But it’s a good one, worth sharing now.

Two or three decades ago, there was a woman who was active in my church for a while. Like many others in the congregation and throughout the community where I live, she was from one of those fine states north of the Mason Dixon line. Unlike the vast majority of them, however, she had a chip on her shoulder about it.

It was difficult to tell if it was a superiority complex or defensiveness. Likely some of both and maybe more. Just as in the case of race, gender, national origin, etc., etc., we certainly don’t treat people differently based on where they’re from. Nonetheless, this person, bless her heart, felt a need to fly her regional flag defiantly.

During some committee meeting one evening — I don’t remember which committtee or what the topic was — she gave her thoughts on whatever we were discussing, then felt a need to add, “But I’m a damn yankee.”

Now, I don’t know if the 1955 Broadway musical “Damn Yankees” coined the term, but it did a lot to put it into general conversation. (The music, by the way, was composed by Richard Adler, a graduate of my alma mater, the University of North Carolina. He returned here to Chapel Hill to live in retirement.)

The antagonists of the story are the New York Yankees, who dominated baseball in those days. The protagonists were the Washington Senators — the ones who later became the Minnesota Twins, as opposed to the later version now known as the Texas Rangers. The Senators didn’t win a lot of games. Aging Joe Boyd, a loyal Senators fan, makes a pact with Devil (it’s based on the Faust legend) to shift this balance of power.

Even though I am a life-long Yankees fan, I am also a fan of this clever and excellent show, which has been made into a movie twice and enjoyed a Broadway revival in the 1990s.

So, in that meeting, when this person identified herself as a “damn yankee,” I naturally thought of the popular musical.

What I wanted to say, but couldn’t muster the courage to do so, was “You play baseball?”

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* “What I wish I’d said”: https://johnbecton.blog/2019/02/26/what-i-wish-id-said/
“What I wish I’d said — round two”: https://johnbecton.blog/2022/07/04/what-i-wish-id-said-round-two/