Words of finite wisdom

I find it hard to relate to people my age - So I just keep quiet. Let me attempt to explain.

I ran into an old friend of mine the other day. Someone I used to play school yard games with. We were both in a rush and had decided to get lunch another day.

The following day I called him up and we agreed to meet at a coffee shop. When I arrived, I saw him before he noticed me, so I approached him. The first few moments of my typical abrasive conversation-starting attitude clearly threw him off. I could see his mind scramble for words as he just attempted to respond with the most basic answers.

How is college going for you? Are you doing well? What school are you attending again?

Oh, yeah, it's uhhh, it's alright. Umm, West Valley Community College.

I read his nervous thoughts - they were asking him, Is my hair alright? Are my pants up high enough, does my shirt crease appropriately? Is there anything in my teeth, does my breath smell bad? His mind was so interested in impressing - pleasing - me with his physical appearance, that it couldn't focus on my questions, or even, my presence. I was clearly making him unnaturally tense.

He was unable to remember my name.

At that moment I understood what I needed to do. I explained to him that I needed to make an urgent phone call that I had forgotten about and I apologized for interrupting our conversation. This would give him some time to recuperate and prepare for the next assault of questions I had been preparing since the days I had left. While I was on the phone with myself, I blatantly made it obvious what my name was.

I returned to our conversation and was pleasantly surprised by his new interest in it. He must have remembered some details about me and now had some support for his defense against the onslaught of my words and questions.

After 20 minutes into the discussion of such agonizingly general topics such as, How has the weather been, or, Have you seen anyone else since you got back, I had realized he had shifted the tide of the battle and it was now I who wanted to escape. Anytime I would bring up a conversational topic that could actually lead to something thought provoking, he would give me short responses and eventually just change the topic entirely, as if I had not even cared about it. His lack of interest of anything important exasperated my knowledge bank of questions and left me with only general and basic discussions, of which he enjoyed greatly - possibly for their simplicity.

Throughout the conversation, however, there was some important information that we got out of it. We discovered that I had become more successful - I decided to go to an out of state college and therefore am away from home defining myself, understand what it is like to live independently, and, most importantly, starting the beginning of my life. He, on the other hand, decided to go to an in-state local community college, and therefore has basically never grew past the maturity level of a high school student. Talking with me brought back the realization of the bad choices he has made, and the consequences that have followed because of them.

I was there because I wanted to catch up on lost times and to discover what this man was now about - to compare his opinions and actions of his childhood to those of today. For him, he seemingly was there because he felt he had to be. If I had never asked him about it, he never would have gone. It wouldn't have even crossed his mind. From the first impression we made on each other to the list of unimportant questions we were going through, he just wanted to leave. Our conversation was like a ticking time bomb and he wanted to be around it only for as long as he was chained down.

This is one of the reasons which makes me feel like I can't relate to anyone my age. Sure, this was a bad event. But it's a bad event amongst many bad events. These bad events have now become the medium - and this is why I keep quiet.

I make people feel bad. Possibly because they see that I am what they could have become if they had made better decisions in their crossroads of choices. Or possibly because they just don't like the way I think - and this is why I find it hard to relate to people my age.

People say
that optimists think the glass is half full,
pessimists think that it's half empty.
But which one are you
when you just find yourself wondering
why the majority of glasses are completely empty?

Glasses by Calvin