Book Covers

The maxim: Don't judge a book by its cover just seems so trite. But there's a reason why it's a maxim. I got reminded of this recently. It's easy to categorize people mentally based on appearances, especially when you deal with a certain segment of the society over a period of time.  But I got reminded recently that appearances can be deceiving.

Dinners in the park are for most part a pretty orderly affair; sometimes there are people waiting at the curb, and they help me carry stuff from the car.  Everyone tends to let the ladies and/or disabled folks, when there are any, go first.  One week while I was still setting up, someone came up to our tables, cut through the line, and began poking through the stuff asking what was for dinner. The person happened to be male, probably about 6'2", about 300 lbs, with unkempt hair and a scraggly beard.  Everybody kinda got out of his way, and I got the impression that they were familiar with him. The first impressions that went through my mind were along the lines of how everyone was clearly intimidated by his size & his brusque manner and my first instinct was to categorize him as a bully.  I told him politely that dinner that night would salad, rice and whatever main dish we happened to be serving that night, but we were still geting ready. We'd start serving shortly and if he got in line, I'd make sure that there'd be enough left for him to get a full plate.    I was pleasantly surprised when he responded. "oh. ok." and he went to the end of the line.  This person, who I will call "C", has come back most weeks.  While he's clearly a bit rough around the edges when it comes to social skills and boundaries, I've sensed no malice.

The lesson got reinforced yesterday morning. There's a man who sits at a street corner you have to pass by if you take a certain freeway exit in Pasadena. This street corner is blocks away from any sort of building or available parking; you have to make a deliberate choice to walk there and sit there. He usually has a pit bull chained to a fence. A lot of people occupy corners like that, usually sporting a sign stating that they need help. Yesterday as I was pulling up to that corner, I happened to make eye contact, and I said "Sorry." He promptly responded "Did I ask you for anything?" to which I replied, "No. But we made eye contact, and I wanted to make sure you knew that I saw you." He then said "I just like to spend a lot of time here." Then he wished me a good day, and I did likewise before I drove off.

I could stop here and have a nice trite blog post. However, there's a flip side; the book covers we write for ourselves, consciously and sub-consciously. It seems to me that we'd all benefit from a third party review of ourselves and the image we try to craft for ourselves. Some folks probably stretch the truth. Others find seeming modest ways of emphasizing things they're proud of: a current TV show features a character who was called out for using the phrase "I went to school outside Boston"  as a disingenuous way of announcing the fact that he went to Harvard. That comes with the territory when you have an ego.

Then there are folks who go the other direction, o keep people at arm's length,  typically to minimize the pain/fear of rejection.  I know that I do this. I know I need to look at this, but this means I have to revisit unpleasant memories. Frankly, this terrifies me.