Curtains!

I dare you to go back and look at how many half-written and quarter-written blog posts I've got piled up behind the curtains of this blog. They're great if not completely worthless. But I look at the volume of posts and I wonder what in the world has been going on in my brain for the past couple of weeks.

One thing I'm starting to realize about the way my brain works-- not just in writing, but other facets of my self-expression-- is that I love a good lead-in. The first paragraph of an article, a book, or an essay is always an author's most creative and candid attempt to get your attention while setting up characters and plot lines. My problem is that the setup comes easy. The rest of the story doesn't.

And such is life. Books have first paragraphs, life has first impressions.

Think about the first person you ever tried to impress on any sort of serious level. Seriously. The first girl I ever had a huge crush on was named Hallie Johnston back in 4th grade. My class would venture next door to her classroom once a week in order to watch videos and presentations from the local DARE officer. Which is kind of funny, I think-- I first felt the relentless pangs of love through DARE and nowadays I do the opposite.

But I digress.

I haven't really changed since I was five years old, so I can say with a fair degree of certainty that I spent a lot of DARE class with my head propped up against my hand, wearing a goofy smile and staring listlessly off into the distance thinking about Hallie. One day I surmised that I would introduce myself just like they did in the movies by telling her she looked nice. After all, it's not like our parents are training us to be ladies men at age nine. This is Hey, Arnold sort of shit.

Predictably, I fucked it up. The whole thing is just a giant, shit-colored mess on the palate of my memory. I think I said she looked "good" instead of "nice," which is a semantic fuck-up unlike any other. I do remember her excusing the comment just as quick as she excused me. I guess another funny point about this story is that she wouldn't even remember any of this, nor would anyone else, but that it was such a pivotal moment in my own life. It was the first outright rejection based on maybe five seconds of talking.

This was just one story in a series of stories which explain why I was single and lonely until the middle of high school, though I haven't decided whether Dragonball Z was a cause or a symptom.

It's not like Hallie completely ruined me from day one, but soon enough I heard that she had started dating some other guy. It was at that point, coupled with all the businesslike advice my mom and dad ever gave me about the importance of making a good first impression, that I realized my people skills would need a serious improvement in order to ever wow anyone over. Because you'll never get where you want to be if you can't make the first step in building a relationship the biggest step.

Eventually (Arguably?) I did learn how to talk to people. I became the master of the firm handshake, the coy grin, and knowing which stories impress what kind of people. I feel like anyone else who goes to Rice learned their people skills in a similar fashion. People are a game; you realize this over years of recitals, job interviews, sucking up to teachers, college interviews, etc .

Just don't forget about substance. Because getting your foot in the door is one thing, but following through the door to the other side is just as important. Shy people are great once you get to know them. I'm like the opposite- I'm great once you get to meet me, so hold onto that first impression as hard as you can.