Not the most annoying kid ever

One thing that worries me for others, but I do it myself, is a tendency to see ourselves as so much worse than we are.

Picking up from where we left off yesterday, gaining maturity is a process, and older and wiser people are often willing to cut you some slack. Their more mature perspective probably helps, but it looks different to us. We may know that they are being gracious, but think that they are still marking down a demerit, and the cringing continues long afterward, when it probably doesn't need to.

A couple of months ago I was visiting with a friend, and we spent some time with her mother as well. We have been friends since third grade, so we go way back.

As I was getting ready to leave my friend's mother said how nice it was to see me because she had always liked me. I expressed surprise because I thought of myself as being a really annoying obnoxious child. That surprised her. She had thought I always had something interesting to say.

That was nice to hear regardless, but I started thinking about why I thought I was annoying, and really it came down to two incidents, which I shall report right here, right now.

The first one came when we were watching Auntie Mame on television. Mame's nephew brings an annoying fiancee home, and she keeps repeating  "I can't tell you how pleased I am to make your acquaintance." Because she way annoying, and repetitive, I made some joke about how for not being able to tell her, she was sure talking a lot, or something like that, and I didn't think anyone picked up on the joke, so I repeated it, and then I realized that it had been heard, it just wasn't funny.

The other time was that they had given me a book, The Wind in the Door, and she asked me how I liked it. There had been a printing error with the book, where one section of the book had repeats of previous pages instead of the correct pages, so there was a chunk of the plot missing, and I started telling her about that when I was sure later that the appropriate response would have been "Thank you. I liked it." It wasn't badly intended - part of my need to talk about it was that I was so surprised that such a thing could happen, and I was still wondering what happened in those pages, so it was on my mind, but I felt like it was a major gaffe.

As a sane adult now, I know that I would not hold those things against a kid. As the kid, I'm still embarrassed.

There is some value in this. I am pretty sure the incident with the book was where I became really good about thanking people. I can't say that I never tried too hard on a joke again, but I at least have a better chance of recognizing it.

It is interesting looking back because while I have this collection of embarrassing incidents, involving multiple people, that I don't like remembering, it's when examining them that they lose some of their power. Yes, my lack of mortal enemies could also work as an indicator that maybe I haven't been too horrible, but reinforcement is nice.

There were things already in place that made it easier to feel a sense of wrongness. There have been a lot of memories coming back during the reading, and why some of them impressed on me so forcefully makes more sense now. We will get into that eventually, though I think I may be getting political for a little while, or maybe get more into Halloween.

The point for today is that not only was I probably not the most annoying kid ever, though I am grateful for that. In addition, it is possible that you have similar concerns, and yet probable that you were in fact a very good and likable kid, and still someone good now.