There’s a long list of things that I could do better and a longer list of things I could do to be better. I try to be fair in my assessment of my flaws, but no matter what, I always end up as my biggest critic.
The first time this blog was listed under “Humor” blog, I seriously questioned whether or not it was miscategorized. I explained to my husband that, while I agree I have a very healthy sense of humor, I don’t actually possess the funny gene. As an example, I listed about a hundred people who are funnier than I am– from my baby brother to George Carlin.
Dave, in his typical artistic way, asked me a few random questions. “Is the sky blue? Is the ocean blue? Is your shirt blue?”
“Well. Yes.” I replied, assuming that he was distracted, and reminding myself to repeat the entire dialogue when he was able to listen.
“Are they the same blue?” he continued.
“… No…” I stated, starting to question his sanity.
“Well then,” he said, “I guess that means that maybe you and George Carlin can be funny at the same time.”
I realized I had created a block in my mind. I was so used to saying I wasn’t funny that I couldn’t wrap my mind around suddenly developing the characteristic.
Just because the sky is blue, doesn’t mean the ocean can’t be– even if it’s not exactly the same shade.
Now before this turns into a reassurance party, let me tell that you I do not lack in the confidence department. I still hesitate to call myself funny, but I often give myself other labels — smart, determined, open-minded.
I’m also quite interesting.
Except, this one time.
I call it “The Time I Was Boring”, or “Rara, Plain and Tall”, and despite the triviality of the story, it’s something I carry with me all the time.
It is a reminder that there are people in the universe who don’t agree with my analysis of myself. It doesn’t mean they would rate me lower or higher on a number scale — it just means that my analysis of myself is not absolute.
The Time I Was Boring happened about a month before I met Dave. My sister, tired of how I was walled up in my small business, manipulated a situation where I would drive home from a faraway volunteer event with the richest, most handsome, best educated bachelor.
“Best of all,” she said triumphantly, “He’s a geek!”
And he was. He was a tech mogul with wonderful manners and, at my sister’s cajoling, he compliantly put me in his Jaguar to drive me home. That’s when the trouble started.
I asked him some questions about himself, and they seemed to make him tense and unhappy. I switched subjects and talked theory about a few techie things. That seemed to keep him interested for a minute or two, but it quickly faded.
I resorted to family stories.
He laughed appropriately when I mooned a senator, asked one or two questions about knife throwing, and would even give a sentence of thought to questions I asked him point-blank.
Still, I couldn’t shake this feeling that something was wrong.
I wasn’t trying to marry this guy– marrying anyone wasn’t in my cards at the moment. I just wanted to get along, but there was something in the air between us that I didn’t quite recognize.
Then he yawned and I recognized it.
Boredom.
He was bored by me.
It sounds like the height of vanity, but I felt like I had never run into that situation ever. Sure. I met people who thought I was unattractive, uncreative, too bossy, too timid, etc. But boring?
I felt like “interesting” was an absolute character trait, but here was a smart, educated, kind man telling me otherwise through body language. So shocked I was in my revelation, I asked him directly if he was bored.
Cornered, he stumbled around with an answer. I reassured him that I was asking from a purely scientific standpoint. He understood what I meant and said, quite kindly and in a roundabout way, that yes– to him, I was boring.
“You’re quite pretty, though,” he said, as a sort of consolation prize.
Ouch.
How to make a paper crown: http://www.etsy.com/blog/en/2012/how-tuesday-two-gold-crowns/
Still, I recovered. It was just a scratch.
40 days later, Dave walked into my shop. I was wearing a cape and putting a puzzle together upside down like a pro. I had fashioned myself a crown out of paper and was singing that “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah” song in all the variations I learned as a child. It was a slow Tuesday.
He stopped to stare, I asked what he was looking at, and in a typical Dave way, he answered with the perfect words:
“The most interesting girl I’ve ever seen.”
Darn straight.
Still, the “Rara, Plain and Tall” story is a reminder of perspective. I may not be funny to myself, but maybe I’m funny to someone else. I may find myself interesting, and others may not. Strangers might consider me pretty, and friends might consider me average.
Who knows what anyone thinks of anything?
We all have our own prior experiences feeding into our brains, telling us how we should perceive things, and the importance of those perceived things.
Are we seeing the same colors in the sky? Does the ocean look the same to each of us? Does “blue” even mean the same thing to any of us?
Does it even matter?
We still have to get along. We shake hands, we give each other rides, we’re nice to our friends’ sisters, we shop in each others’ stores, and we make friends.
We go to all that trouble and we do all of that work because all of us know, deep down, that there are infinite shades of blue, and the world is better for every single one of them.
