Late last summer, I self-published a book of my favorite columns that has occupied this very spot every weekend for twelve years. It’s called “Back To The Lake” and includes some of my readers’ favorites, such as “Don’t Make Eggplant Parmigan,” and “When I was A Pirate.”

So much has changed in twelve years. Thankfully, the columns in my book connect us back to a different, maybe better time, so if that’s what you’re looking for, you’ll find it. The Good Neighbor Bookstore in Lakewood carries my book, as does Webb’s Candy Shop in Mayville (think sponge candy! It’s an excuse to buy sponge candy!), and the CHQ Marketplace across from Camp Chautauqua and at the Bemus Point Superette. It’s reasonably priced and a fun book for a cold fall day.

Here’s one of my favorite chapters in the book. “When I Was A Pirate” is a true story about not always listening to our husbands when they come home with great ideas.

WHEN I WAS A PIRATE

Humbleness is one of the finest of the human virtues.

We’re beholden to remember that none of us are more special than the rest; everyone puts on their pants the same way in the morning.

The good news is that life has a way of rolling over us with a cement truck enough times in our lives that by the time we hit middle age, any sense that we are “extra special” has long left us.

Oh, I’ve had all kinds of cement-truck moments—some more humbling than others, but nonetheless, several were the true splattered-on-the-road kind of moments that did their intended job of deflating any trumped up sense I had of myself.

One such moment was the night I was a pirate.

Had my husband never come home to tell me that we’d been invited to the Mermaid Ball, I probably would have gone my whole life without dressing up like a pirate. This would have been fine with me, but apparently I wasn’t meant to leave the earth without wearing boots with buckles once and shivering in me timbers.

“We’ve been invited to the Mermaid Ball,” my husband proudly told me, “and we have to dress up like pirates.”

“Who told you we had to dress up like pirates?” I asked him, because I’d long known asking my husband what to wear to a function gets me in the worst kind of trouble.

“Everyone is dressing up like pirates,” he said, and he sounded so sure of himself that part of me believed him.

When the night of the ball came and I put on my costume, I had to stuff flesh back into places where it had trouble staying put and I wondered if even a pirate would want to be seen with me.

“I think I look a little saucy,” I said out loud.

“I believe the term is a wench,” my husband offered, because why break his record for never knowing the right thing to say?

He didn’t look any better. He was supposed to be a swashbuckling, one-eyed Captain Cook kind of pirate, but he looked like Peter Pan in a dress with a patch over one eye.

When we pulled up into the parking lot, I wanted to crawl under the seat when I saw women shuffling up to the door in ball gowns, as if we’d stumbled onto a young woman’s coming-of-age party in Paris.

There were pearls and dangly diamonds floating around the women’s necks and there was chiffon and silk sashaying across the sidewalk. I saw dainty strapless shoes and glittering heels and some had exotic flowers tied to their hair. But, no, I saw no pirates (except for the one sitting next to me).

It was one of those moments when my husband knew all the things I was about to say, and so for a while we both said nothing. He got out of the car, holding his cardboard sword across his chest, to give me time to think.

“Okay,” I said to myself after a time. “You are dressed like a pirate (at best) while everyone else looks like Jacqueline Kennedy arriving at an inauguration. You can drive away or go into the ball and be the best pirate you can be.”

I opened the door of the car. “Let’s go get a flask of rum,” I said, pulling up my dress.

My husband happily pointed out that a few other misinformed pirates had arrived, and we spent most of the night with them, sequestered in the corner of the ballroom telling dark tales and saying “aaargh.”

Isn’t that something about life? Sometimes you get to be the proverbial princess–when you feel like you’ve got it all going on and you’re sashaying down life’s roads. And then, just as fast, you find yourself sitting in the corner with a trove of pirates trying to keep it together.

This is the way life humbles us–and sometimes in the most creative ways.