There are a two people living in my continuum care complex that I don’t like and didn’t from the minute we met. I’m trying hard to understand why I make snap judgments about people because there are others living here that I’ve loved from our first encounters. Right or wrong I like to think of myself as a student of human nature and as one I decided I’ve got a rare opportunity to exam if first impressions hold true. In past work or social situations it’s been easy to avoid people who at first glance made me not want to get to know them better, but here that’s not so easy to do. Here there’s a core group of us---twenty-five or so---who take part in most of the activities and/or group meals while the other twenty-five living here are like prairie dogs who spend most of their time underground to protect themselves from predators. We might see them popping up at the mailboxes and going to or from their cars but that’s about all.
Recently my building acquired our fifth prairie dog, an aloof retired engineer, who seems determined to ignore all attempts others have made to get more than a “hi” greeting out of her. It’s quite the talk of the town as one might have said in a past century. At first I thought it was just me and I internalized the cold shoulder as being from one of those tall skinny, well-put together women who is afraid to ride in an elevator with a fat person because she thinks she’ll get fat by osmosis. But she also gives a cold shoulder to our resident Cheerleader so I had to slap my insecurities back into place. I’ve mentioned the Cheerleader before. She’s a cute, energetic do-gooder blonde who probably hasn’t had a mean thought in her head since babyhood when her mother tried to switch her from the nipple to a bottle. The engineer walks Energizer Bunny fast and keeps on going whenever someone says “Hi” or asks, “Are you new here?” Even the Cheerleader has given up on trying to make her feel welcome and like we're an inclusive, friendly community. The Cheerleader is popular and a force for good and she works hard at getting to know the newbies and introducing them to others with common interests.
Where was I going with this post? Oh, ya, I’m trying to figure out if my first impressions of people have held up after getting to know them better. I was wrong about T-shirt Tom the lawyer who I thought was stuck up and rude because he asked to sit at my table once then two minutes later said he changed his mind and wanted to eat alone. He turned out to be to be a nice guy. He says living with all us women has made him a better person. In the workplace, as a partner in a law firm he had to carry himself with a certain air that he didn’t name but here, he says, he has learned to totally relax and be happy. (The table incident I'm chalking up to him being like a fish out of water when he first got here and trying to make small talk scared him.) He’s got the nicest family. His sons all have a nightly zoom meeting with him and we’re often posing for photos that he shows to his five boys--kind of a talking blog, I’m guessing, as he tells them about his day. He’ll shop on Amazon, mark something in a Wish List and his one son is in charge of ordering the stuff and getting it shipped to Dad. (We get Amazon deliveries here 2-3 times a day.)
T-shirt Tom is the most dramatic example of me misjudging a person here but then again he admits to having mellowed out since moving in so did I really misjudge him or did the change make the difference? The Cheerleader too, when we first met I was leery around her because I thought maybe her goodie two shoes persona was an act. However, I quickly figured out that, yes, she is the real deal. But I don’t put her in a column where I misjudged someone because I purposely reserved my judgement of her for the first few months and she has my favorite cousin to thank for that. I hold her in high esteem and as proof that angels do inhabit the earth and they have a lot of do-good similarities.
For the most part, though, my first impressions have held up and I’m happy about that. I have not seen anything to change my mind, for example, about the two pretentious souls I've disliked from day one. I’d hate to think I've gone through life discounting and misjudging people based on little more than a vibe I can’t name. Call it instinct or snobbery or a past life experience whispering in my ear, I can usually tell if I'm going to like someone in the first five minutes of meeting them. Probably not fair, but after my mini introspection here I'll continue making snap judgments but I'll leave the guilt of doing so behind.
I don’t have any real friends here and I’m not surprised or unhappy about that. I’ve only had two really good friends in my entire life: one in the third of my life who I met in kindergarten and then my husband in the last two thirds of my life. Both friendships were honed through years of mutual trust and spending quality time together. At the ripe old age of eighty I don’t have the time to build those kinds of friendships again and for what? Just to lose them? We’re already lost 5-6 of the original residents who all came into this new place together last October. But I do have an eclectic group of interesting neighbors to chat with or play with or eat with whenever the mood strikes me and that’s worth a lot in the grand scheme of growing older.
And the cherry on top of my social sundae came last night when six of us revealed ourselves to be flaming liberals and we solved all the world's problems in a long after dinner 'brain storming' session proving that I'm not the only liberal who keeps her cards close to her vest until she knows it's safe to come out and play. ©
“Writing is a socially acceptable form of getting naked in public.”
Paulo Coelho
Photo: This photo was taken of the line dancing class the day they did the flash mob that I wrote about a last month. It was posted on the internet by the CCC so I am not breaking anyone's privacy rights by sharing it here. Some of these ladies I've written about in past posts including The Cheerleader, Auntie Mame and Robbie's Mom.
