The Mask

Many days the Daily Prompt doesn’t inspire me and I’m not one to talk (or write) when I have nothing to say. But today’s prompt, mask, brings up a fond memory; watching the movie, The Mask, on a flight home from India.

I was traveling with a woman who went to the Dera ( a sort of ashram) every year and ‘knew the ropes’. She was a very serious, ‘spiritual’ person and I got on her nerves a lot, joking around and being myself. Once we arrived at our destination in the Punjab we didn’t have to see each other much but we had return tickets together.

I’m sure she was hoping a month of study and meditation would change me but it only made me more sure that being myself the way to be, warts and all. No false mask of piety here.

So we are sitting on a flight from New Delhi to London, it’s a very long flight and we’re crammed together.  The flight movie was ‘The Mask‘ with Jim Carey.  I had not seen it before and took the headphones. My companion looked at me like I was crazy. I looked back at her like “What?”  She pursed her lips: apparently a Jim Carey film would be too frivolous and silly.  Well, I had just spent a month with a whole bunch of people wearing their ‘pious masks’ and really craved silly.

I also had never watched a movie with headphones and didn’t realize how hard I was laughing. She tapped me on the shoulder and said I was laughing too loud. I did my very best to stifle it after that but it was hard! That movie is funny and all the pent-up hilarity was bursting out. Every once and while I’d get an elbow jab and I could feel her giving me dirty looks.  Oh, did I test her ‘spirituality’!

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