Do you ever do or say something completely uncharacteristic of you and you think it will be fine because it was just this once and you’re normally super intentional about how you handle those kinds of situations and what are the odds of something embarrassing coming out of the one time you don’t do things the way you normally do?
No? Just me?
Okay.
Tonight I went to an event put on by the church I’ve been going to. It was put together for people to have the opportunity to meet leadership, ask questions, and meet people in general.
On my way to this event, it started raining really hard.
I knew it was going to rain today, which is why I set my umbrella right by the door this morning before work — a place super visible, no chance in the world that I could possibly forget it. Because I already learned my umbrella lesson, remember?
So anyway, I was walking to this event today and it started raining really hard and it suddenly became clear to me that I somehow managed to still forget my umbrella (yeah, today has been great).
Eventually I made it to the event, looking slightly more attractive than a literal wet rodent. The woman greeting people at the door noticed me feeling my overly damp hair and, instead of just letting me disappear into the invisibility that New York is supposed to offer, she called me on it and reassured me that I looked great. (Christians aren’t supposed to lie, but whatever.)
However, instead of just smiling and moving on with my life, I proceeded to tell her (with great gusto) the story of how I’ve been here for three weeks and the main lesson I’ve learned is to just own an umbrella because you never know when it’s going to be down-pouring and you’re going to get trapped underneath the awning of the only gift shop in New York that doesn’t sell umbrellas and then cave and buy an umbrella just to have the sky clear up 30 seconds later but then have a shot at redemption a week later when you actually see the forecast ahead of time and you plan on bringing the umbrella you spontaneously just bought out of necessity, BUT THEN STILL FORGET THE UMBRELLA.
I promise I didn’t sound as crazy as that just made me sound, but I definitely did volunteer way too much information about my umbrella situation.
She asked me a couple other questions about myself, and then I did finally go on my merry way.
After I sat down, I realized my grave error—I never asked about her! The whole point of these things is to meet people and hopefully start building relationships, and I just rambled about umbrellas and didn’t even ask her a single question about herself!
I’ve always tried to be intentional about asking questions and getting to know other people, instead of being that person who just talks about themself for 20 minutes.
But here I was, totally not doing that.
Completely uncharacteristic of me.
As I settled into my seat (in between conversation with the girl next to me who was already giving me a chance to redeem myself and my manners), I just hoped that the greeter lady would not think ill of me, but reassured myself with the thought that I’d probably never see her again.
That is, until the pastor got up and introduced his wife to us all.
And there she was. The greeter lady.
I felt like I was just talking to a celebrity in disguise without realizing it.
Not just talking, but lamenting about umbrellas.
I had the chance to form a foundation for building a relationship with the pastor’s wife, a really cool lady and one that I would love to get to know better, but instead I talked about myself the whole time and didn’t even try to get to know anything about this person I was talking to.
How embarrassing.
So.
The life lessons you can glean from from all of this are 1) don’t forget your umbrella, and 2) even if you do forget your umbrella, it’s not an excuse to not display basic decency by showing interest in the life of the person you’re speaking with.
Always ask.
Make them feel like you actually care about more than just complaining about the weather, and maybe you’ll actually have a shot at, like, making a friend or something.
That’s all. Do as I say and not as I did.