One morning several years back while running, I came across a stack of old looking books lying in the street in the rain. I love books, and so I decided since I was about a half mile or so from home to pick them up and take them with me. As luck would have it, I looked through the books when I got them home, and amongst the lot was an original copy of the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. I see things discarded by the roadside all the time. One year for Christmas, my dad jokingly suggested giving me a bumper sticker for my Saturn that says "This is not a abandoned vehicle". It creates an interesting impression, but I know that if I assume things left out by the roadside in the rain are trash I might miss out on a chance at something very valuable.
They say that nothing can compensate for a first impression, which bodes poorly for me. From my beard to my honest expressions of what I think to my 20 year old car, I don't tend to give a good first impression. Ironically, if I were to reciprocate what they claim applies to me, I would probably not have many friends. You see, if I were to restrict myself to people who were like me, I'd be lonely. Yes, I proceed with caution, but I was taught that it's what on the inside that counts. Now that I'm an adult, I'm disappointed to discover that all too often the opposite is true.
Sometimes people have preconceived opinions of you without ever having met you. When I transferred between campus locations, the secretary told me how happy she was that she waited to form an opinion about me until she met me. Apparently, there were all sorts of things going around about me prior to my transfer, which mostly amounted to negative denotations of the fact that I'm cavalier and a crusader. When students come into the classroom, mostly they know about my online ratings, and I'm sure some people chose the other instructor because he gets better marks.
Sometimes we don't know we're giving an impression. People tell me to dress like I'm going to run into the love of my life all the time, but I dress appropriately to the situation. When I work on my yard, I wear old clothes and boots; when I teach class I wear a suit; when I hike, I look like a homeless man. If you walk up to me and essentially give me only the next five seconds to impress you, you're going to be disappointed. All too often people put us to tests without telling us. We don't usually know they did it unless we discover that we failed the test. I learned to be me, and I learned that I like who I am, and I'm hoping that my comfort with myself will attract people into my life who are comfortable with themselves and comfortable with me.
Sometimes we make a mistake in the conclusions we make from impressions we get. Years ago, a coworker confessed how glad she was that work forced her to get to know me, because if not she would have never gotten to know me and felt that would be a shame. I even have a student this term that I misread. I thought she was a flighty, floosy girl, but it turns out she's one of the smartest students in this section. I told her I misjudged it because of her age and the way she speaks, and I felt bad. I know better than anyone else that the beard is not the man, that the clothes are not the man, that the Saturn is not the man. Many a player dresses in fanciful duds, and many a player chooses a car to impress. Anyone can buy a fancy car; not many people can keep a car running.
All too often we judge books by their covers. We choose our chocolates based on their content, but we choose our mates based on their colorful candy shell. I actually gave JK Rowling a try, not because her books hooked me, but because my family liked them. Normally, after 50 pages of asinine scribblings, I would have tossed her books aside as the drivel I considered them to be. Not all the books you find soaking in the gutter are worth keeping. Not all the things on craigslist are worth picking up even if they are free. Not every fancy vase is valuable; some of them are fake. There is usually more to the story, and sometimes the rest of the story is amazing and wonderful. Don't act like it's a bad thing to find out more about a person than the first impression provides. I might be that expensive biography you find lying by the road under the weather.
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