Beware those first impressions!

It’s funny sometimes how totally independent conversations drop topics into your mind that rattle around for a few days. Even funnier when they come to life 🙂

Friday evening I had a long chat with a friend I had not spoken to in awhile. We got caught up on things and then somehow it came down to him telling me how someone we met earlier in the year gave him a certain impression, but how his second meeting with this person really turned that around. Different settings showed different sides to the person. Plus, my friend has a tendency to think more on the negative side about people at first which is often then proven wrong over time. So we delved into that tendency a bit before saying goodbye. Topic planted.

Today I had another catch-up type conversation with another friend. Sure enough, she started talking about how she knows she rattles peoples cages a bit because she knows their first impression of her is often off base. I told her that I thought people in general are quite conscious of what their ‘dominant’ public persona is, and that they wear that face on purpose. But of course, it is always short sighted to think that what you see at first is all there is to a person. We are all multi-layered onions right? Now, there did THAT image come from? Seriously, I know someone referred to people as ‘onions’ before in reference to the many layers of our personalities, but I cannot remember where!! A movie? TV show? Interview with some sort of public figures? Hmmmm…

Anyway, with all that in the background I went outside this afternoon to put out some LED lights. I’ve been trying out different brands and slowly replacing my old holiday lights with the LED’s. Hopefully my SDG&E bill wont be as high as previous years! My goal is to replace all by next season. Anyhoo…as I stepped out front, I heard a woman’s voice calling out “Car! Get off to the left! Car!” and I looked up to see a young boy of about 9 riding his bike. Behind him out of the corner of my eye I saw an adult on a bike similar to the boys’ – kind of a sporty/BMX type bike. I remembered that as I came home from getting lunch, a garage door was open up the street with 3 of those bikes in it. They also have a Santa on a motorcycle display in their front yard – they are a biker family of sorts 😉 So I assumed based on that first view that the mom was out riding with her son. A few minutes later, I hear them approaching again with a bit of speed as the direction they came from is downhill. I look up and the woman is about 10 feet ahead of the boy. She looks at first glance and with her helmet on to be maybe my age (given her speed, hard to pin that down really) with shoulder length dark hair. Petite as she seemed to fit well on the BMX bike meaning her knees weren’t sticking out at the sides. As she flies by turning down the corner at my house I hear the boy yell out “Grandma! Turn into the cul de sac on the left!”

Grandma??????!!!!!!!!! Heh. You go granny ;->