Free My Year with Eleanor by Noelle Hancock Page B

serious situations—church sermons, job interviews, even sessions with Dr. Bob—I’d torture myself by imagining doing something completely stupid like standing up and shouting, “Oooga Boooga Pee Paw!” while shaking my hips and beating on my chest like King Kong. Then I’d struggle to keep a straight face and the smile out of my voice when it was my turn to talk.
    Dr. Bob asked, “Where did you learn to stop being silly? When did you start taking yourself so seriously?”
    â€œActually I think it started at Yale. I just”—I paused and searched for the right words—“folded inward somehow. It was so intense, you know? Everyone had to be number one at everything. Students didn’t just play the violin. They played Carnegie Hall at age twelve. I knew I couldn’t compete, so I stopped putting myself out there.”
    â€œAnd after college?”
    â€œI went to work for a newspaper. The staff prided themselves on being intellectuals. People who didn’t take themselves seriously weren’t taken seriously by others. Whenever I goofed off, they’d roll their eyes. So I stopped, and that part of me never really came back.”
    Dr. Bob nodded thoughtfully. “Goofiness is threatening to people who want to be in control of themselves all the time, who want to be serious. What stops us from acting goofy is our fear of being evaluated. But silliness can be empowering. I think you need to stop being afraid to be goofy.”
    I considered, right now in this moment, doing the Ooga Booga dance; but I suspected he wouldn’t see this as goofiness, but as a sign I needed a referral to a neurologist. Instead I asked, “How do I do that?”
    â€œBy practicing doing goofy things.” Grinning, he held his hands out to each side and I feared he was going to make jazz hands. He did. “Hey, it works for me. I’m a goofy therapist!”
    The next day I signed up for a tap dancing course. In terms of goofiness, it’s hard to top a group of adults wearing Mary Janes hopping around and performing elaborate routines for a nonexistent audience. One of the routines involved a phenomenally absurd knee-slapping move, then walking across the room in an exaggerated manner while waving, bringing to mind one of those cartoon frogs pumping a top hat and cane. I also put on a Santa costume left over from college and wore it around during the day. But even as I tried to distract myself with other goofy tasks, a sense of dread lurked in the pit of my stomach. There was no getting around the inevitable.
    I was going to have to karaoke.
    M ost people start out as goofy children and grow more serious with age. Eleanor went the opposite route. One of my favorite stories about her is from a memoir by novelist Fannie Hurst. In Anatomy of Me, Fannie described her visit to the White House in 1933. After lunch Fannie accompanied Eleanor to the hospital, where one of her sons was recuperating after an appendectomy. Next they attended an opening of a Picasso exhibit, where Eleanor gave a speech. Then the duo returned to the White House to host a delegation of about forty educators from the Philippines and meet with an African American Baptist minister from Atlanta. After a quick change of clothes, they went out to dinner with a Roosevelt family friend. At eleven o’clock, Eleanor and Fannie returned to the White House to see the first screening of a “talking picture” from a projector that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had recently installed for the president. Well after midnight, Fannie crawled into bed in the Lincoln bedroom, “deciding for once to retire without even removing my makeup.” Then came a knock at the door.
    â€œCome in,” Fannie said uncertainly . . .
    Eleanor strode in wearing a black bathing suit, a towel draped over one arm.  “Remember when I promised . . . to show you my yoga exercises?” she asked, spreading the