by skarekrow13 Thu Mar 14, 2013 12:21 pm
Sorry for the double post (No I'm not) but I also wanted to tell a short story (short for me...unless I keep adding parenthetical tangents) about how you never know how you're regarded by others and that there's always chances and opportunities for positive interactions that we blindly walk by every day.
So...in very brief summary I was not a ladies' man by any means for the first 31+ years of my life (aka, ever and I'm still not). In High School I was super shy, had very little contact with females and assumed most thought I was repugnant or perhaps even worse...forgettable. I didn't think I was on anyone's radar for any means. Jump to adulthood with the disclaimer that the stories I'm about to share do not mean that I could have been mackin' all day long like a tractor trailer or even could have kindled a romantic involvement with the persons I will soon introduce....I'll provide the moral at the end.....like all good fairy tales.
One of my roles at work is to train people in certain regulatory required materials. A couple years ago I was sitting in a classroom during a break and one of the new female employees kinda hinted she knew me. I had no recollection of her at all. Then she referenced my pro wrestling name. Wait what? How did she know that. Then she started talking about my long hair. And a few other things about me. Weird. I looked for her name on the course roster and looked in my yearbook from my Senior year thinking I forgot a class mate. Turns out she was (I think) five years behind me in school.
Forward to yesterday. My primary job is investigating the not so pleasant things that occur in the agency. I do not have many visitors, aside from a few friends in the building I work in. I don't think people hate me and most will say "hi" and even talk to me, but it's rare that someone from off site that I don't have a strong work relationship with will randomly come into my office for the hell of it. There's one person that was hired relatively recently who I remembered from High School. She's always seemed very friendly when we've talked at work which is not notable. She seems very friendly over all. Yesterday she broke the general rule and, while on a break from a training she was here for (I wasn't teaching) popped in and chatted for a good bit.
The moral, again is to not say I'm some player but that both of these individuals, whom I was not good friends with in school had favorable enough impressions of me (the aloof antisocial smart kid weirdo who was heavily involved in martial arts and pro wrestling) where they voluntarily started conversations with me many years later. I wasn't forgettable. I wasn't invisible. Had I made a small change looking directly at people or not hiding, who knows what friends I would have made. What conversations I missed. Instead of regret I learned this, just by being me....
I was someone. I mattered more than I imagined at the time. Like me, you're all someone. You're making impressions to everyone around you. Like me maybe you think it's mostly negative. Maybe you feel forgettable. Maybe you think you're invisible.
I wanted you to know I thought that too. I was wrong. - Spoiler:
I just remembered another similar story from college. It's in a spoiler since you've bared with me long enough, feel free to skip. I recall during summer break I was helping a friend do roofing work. The person's house we were working on was the father of a guy I knew in elementary school. For reference, the last time I say the guy was in the fifth grade because we moved to a different town after a house fire. So around age eleven for me. I was doing the roof work around age nineteen or twenty. Anyway, I made a vague reference about having gone to school with the homeowner's son during a conversation. The next day I showed up for work and the guy comes up and says he asked his son if he remembered me. He said that his son indicated he did in fact remember me and specifically that it was because, no matter what was going on I always had a smile. He even mentioned the house fire specifically (I didn't change schools for about a month after it occurred).
