Dr. Carolyn Lee reflects on a different cliché each week. Recently, in her blog, “If Walls Could Talk,” she looks at the information about us that our walls provide. This week Carolyn explores the cliché, different strokes for different folks.
Learn more about Dr. Carolyn Lee on her biography page or investigate 29 more clichés in her latest book, Keep Your Eye on the Ball And Other Clichès to Live By.
Different Strokes for Different Folks
For three years, I lived my life “on the road.” Members of the Up with People troupe were allocated in the homes of the people in whose towns we were doing a show. As you can imagine, traveling through different states, different countries and different continents meant widely—no, wildly—different living situations. This lifestyle required extraordinary, extreme flexibility and the willingness to adapt to unpredictable, unavoidable, and sometimes very peculiar circumstances.
Even traveling in the United States, the country of my birth, was sometimes challenging. I experienced homes and families and individuals very unlike any I had previously known. There was that little, square, stucco house in the middle of a mud flat in Gallup, New Mexico. At the other end of the spectrum was the palatial home-with-a-pool in Newport Beach, California. In Colorado Springs, I lived in a trailer park. In Oklahoma City, I spent four days in a nunnery.
I stayed with a family who owned a horse farm in Providence, Rhode Island. Their lives revolved around equestrian activities and their house was filled with photographs and trophies and artwork and figurines, all reflecting their love of these animals. While I was there, one of the children was participating in a horse jumping show. I had never seen a horse jump. My hosts in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, were sailors. All the photographs and trophies and artwork in their house represented their life on the water. I had never been on a sailboat. I lived with a black lady named Olive in Dover, Delaware. I had never been in a black person’s home.
I lived with a couple in Pampa, Texas, who were rock collectors. Rocks everywhere! My hostess in Louisville, Kentucky was very into crafts. Her specialty was working with various forms of pasta. She glued macaroni noodles to high-heeled shoes, painted them bright colors and sold them at craft fairs. I stayed with a woman in Poughkeepsie, New York who was a fabulous cook. I stayed with a lot of women who were not fabulous cooks.
I have spoken and written about my host family in Bruges, Belgium for years. This was my first European host home, and I was there for ten days. There were two little blonde girls in that family who thought I was so odd, they didn’t use a personal pronoun when referring to me. They called me “It.” My host “dad” in Ghent, Belgium was a hairdresser. One night he took me down to his studio, where he cut and styled my hair in the fashion of Barbra Streisand on one of her album covers. I was staying in a home with no hot water in Gonzaga, Italy, so my hostess heated water in a tea kettle and poured it over my head. I stayed in a monastery in San Remo, Italy and a chateau in Tienen, Belgium. I’ve been a guest in a Norman castle, and I’ve been a guest in a log cabin.
During my road years, I stayed in the homes of a dentist, a dermatologist, a chorus girl, a zookeeper, a mechanic, and an executive at IBM. I ate at these people’s tables; I went on sightseeing tours with them; I sometimes attended their churches; I occasionally baby-sat with their kids, and I had long conversations with them that went on until I could no longer stay awake.
Even on the occasions when I stayed in hotels, I often had a “cultural experience.” At the Duangtawan Hotel in Chiang Mai, Thailand, there were beautifully dressed people stationed at the front entrance who bowed low every time I came through the door. Staying at a bed and breakfast in Ireland often meant walking through the family’s living room to get to my accommodations. I can remember two times when cows were mooing outside my bedroom window. Our hotel in Rome was on the Via della Conciliazione, which was just a few steps from St. Peter’s Square. From our room there, we could hear the bells of the Vatican.
Reviewing what I’ve written here reminds me how lucky I am to have all these people and places in my bank of personal experiences. If variety is really the spice of life (another cliché to think about), then my life has been extraordinarily spicy. I can’t say what mark these things I’ve described have left on me. I’m not sure who I’d be if I had had fewer adventures and grown up and old in St. Louis. I have to face the possibility that I might now be ecstatically happy, surrounded by adorable grandchildren and holding the hand of my devoted husband with whom I’d be celebrating our sixtieth wedding anniversary.
Some believe the phrase “different strokes for different folks” originated with Mohammed Ali. In 1966, he used it to explain his boxing style. Little did he know he had coined a cliché that would later be used to describe the myriad of ways in which people’s lives differ from each other. Little did I know, in 1966, that I’d have an opportunity to get a look at so many of them.
Want to Read More?
Check out Dr. Carolyn Lee’s blogs on her website, she features a new cliché each week or you can order her new book, Keep Your Eye on the Ball And Other Clichès to Live By. Want to know more about the woman behind the words? Read more about Carolyn here. We hope you enjoyed this article learning more about the cliché, different strokes for different folks.
