It’s in the Eyes
Back to my childhood, the one of constant moves. No one ever told me, here’s how you make friends. I guess they figured I’d figure it out. But here’s the truth. I don’t remember the name of any friend I made until about the eighth grade. And the only ones with whom I’m still in touch only came into my life in the middle of my junior year. Basically, I was a vagabond, the outsider, the one likely to be gone tomorrow, unable to connect.
And its fun in my advanced age to look at things I do and realize they were most likely the coping mechanisms of a child designed to manage an unfamiliar world. Take what people call over-thinking. Thinking helps when encountering strangers. You put two and two together, and sometimes you have to figure out if it’s even two and two you’re dealing with. And it’s especially important if you lack an innate ability to read social cues, which is one of my shortcomings. Basically, I developed a manual system.
The trick, of course, is interpreting the cues and figuring out when to take action, or if any action is really required. I remember many a weekend during my working life spent running scenarios only to realize I really didn’t need to do anything, and I probably didn’t even need to run the scenarios. It’s a wonder, actually, I did as well as I did given how frail it all seemed to me. But I doubt anyone really knew what was up in my fevered brain, how hard I was working to compensate for a lack of natural ability. All I know is that I’m glad to be retired. It probably added years to my life.
Part 20, Living in America: An Old Man’s Journey into His Past