Free Same Old Truths by Delora Dennis

the neighbors’ driveways; don’t forget the donation basket on your way out), Virginia smiled and said, “It gives me great pleasure to welcome Kay Manning to our group. Kay was the first person to answer my ad and the first person I interviewed and invited to join.” Virginia looked at Kay and winked. “Unfortunately, the body shop where she works keeps her so busy this is the first opportunity she’s had to come and introduce herself to everyone. Kay?” Virginia sat down, turning the floor over to Kay.
    Kay stood up to a smattering of polite applause. Everyone was staring up at her, waiting to see evidence of Virginia’s endorsement as the group’s wonderful maiden candidate.
    “Hi everyone. It’s a pleasure to be a part of this group and I’m looking forward to getting to know each of you personally. Thank you.” And with that she sat down.
    “Aren’t you going to tell us a little about yourself?” a pudgy man with a bad case of rosacea and a wide gap between his front teeth interjected.
    “Oh,” Kay said from her seat. She stood again and said, “Right.” She hadn’t been prepared to speak. “Well, let’s see. Like Virginia said, my name is Kay Manning. I was born and raised here - graduated from local schools. I’m a working mom, raising two girls, Cory, twelve and Mariah nine.”
    She was about to clear up any misconception Virginia may have created with her little body shop joke, when the man who parted his teeth in the middle beat her to the punch. “Do you work on foreign cars?” he asked innocently.
    Kay looked over at Virginia who was obviously delighted by the question. “Well…” she began tentatively, “We…I’m sorry. What’s your name?”
    “Jim. Jim Blake,” the man answered. Kay thought he might be blushing but she couldn’t tell because of his rosacea.
    “Well, Jim, I do work in a body shop, but it’s not the automotive kind. It’s the dead kind.” She was trying to keep things light.
    He looked at her as if she was speaking Chinese. Some of the others in the group were starting to get it and a little giggle went around the half-circle.
    “I’m an apprentice funeral director, Jim. I work in a mortuary. But, I’d be happy to refer you to the guy who works on my Honda.”
    Kay could have sworn that, in a split second, Jim’s face displayed three of the Five Stages of Grief. But it wasn’t anything she hadn’t encountered a hundred times before. When someone learned about her profession, they reacted either with horror, curiosity or admiration. It usually depended on the extent of their personal experience with death and dying. Making fun of her job was an easy way to move past the inevitable awkwardness. But she was used to it. It came with the territory.
    Kay didn’t have anything more to say so she sat down. Her only purpose for being here was to find out about the houseboat weekend.
    Let’s get on with it.
    Virginia launched into the group’s scheduled presentation. Tonight’s was on the importance of making positive first impressions. Kay wondered how professional these people could be if they had to be lectured about stuff they should have learned in high school.
    Virginia’s remedial tutorial finally came to an end and she turned the meeting over to Carol Ann, the head of the planning committee for the houseboat weekend.
    The attractive forty-something, buxom blond, with big blue eyes and chicklet-white teeth walked authoritatively to the front of the group, clipboard in hand. She stood there for a moment, nervously flipping the top page back and forth as if she was looking for something that had previously been there but was now gone.
    “Ok,” the woman began, “We’ve run into some problems with the houseboat rental.”
    Low murmuring rumbled through the group.
    “First of all, I found out it’s not going to make sense to rent two boats. The smallest boat they have sleeps twelve and it costs around $1000 for the weekend.”
    She paused for