Turns out it's kind of important to be able to introduce yourself to people. Particularly when those people are the group of kids at your job that you've been working at for about a week.
You have to introduce yourself to them. And be like, "Hey there! I like...plants!" Otherwise, you just become that long-haired guy who stands and sits around and doesn't say anything in the morning. Who wants to be that guy? No one. No one wants to be that guy.
You especially don't want to be that guy when...
you see a kid about to cry while he's sitting on his little scooter thing that he and the other kids scoot around the gym with, and so you go over to him and say his name and ask him what's wrong, but he doesn't know that you know his name so he slowly scoots his way over to the staff across the gym who he does know.
You don't want to have a crying child scoot away from you while you're asking "what's wrong". Not that I think I could have helped him but...it was really the scooting that got me. It wasn't even the fast way to scoot. He was facing forward and slowly digging his heels into the gym floor with his arms limply wiggling from side-to-side and inching away from me at knee level on a lemon-yellow scooter.
I wouldn't describe a lot of things as insurmountable or staggering in my life, but at that moment I was thinking, "There is nothing I can do right now to get this child to acknowledge me. This is a task far beyond my abilities and I might as well not be here at all."
Like, imagine that, and then imagine that child, that sniffling scooting child thinking, this guy? What does he want? What? What is he doing? I'm embarrassed for him. He thinks he's some kind of a professional. I'm going to slowly move my plastic square on wheels over to someone who really knows what he's doing.
Or imagine like, a man dragging his way through the sands of a hot desert. His legs have given out and he's about to die of dehydration so he's clawing his way across the dunes because about 100 feet away he thinks he sees a canteen that might have life-giving water. Now, imagine me as a misguided and self-conscious ketchup salesman who happens to spy this man and thinks it would be a great time to practice his sales pitch.
"Sir, would you like to try our new ketchup? It's made from 7 different kinds of vine ripened toma--"
That man's not gonna eat my ketchup! No! He's got tunnel vision but he's still gonna wave me away. This isn't the time for ketchup, son! I should have asked him for ketchup when he was on the plane flying over Arizona two days ago before a flock of geese clogged up the engines.
But I'm not mad. Why would I be mad? I failed at something. Sweet Failure! A truly wonderful thing. Nothing teaches you more than failure. Failure is what learning feels like when it's being hardwired directly into your brain after tearing out all those faulty connections you made while you were sleeping. You were half-awake, half-asleep thinking "I can do anything! I can talk to kids! I can wrestle a grizzly bear on a hot-air balloon! I'm never gonna get a weird painful red splotch on the side of my mouth"
But Failure comes along and is like BLAH-DOW! You just got your self some adjustment and some humble-pie on the side! Be a better person!
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