Sometimes you meet someone and totally get off on the wrong foot. And sometimes, you meet someone and get off on the right foot, but then because you're a completely graceless klutz you trip over the right foot and then find that all of a sudden you are on the wrong foot and all you've got, to quote Erin Brockovitch, are two wrong feet in fucking ugly shoes.
It's happened to me. Perhaps it has also happened to you.
Being wrong-footed is a surefire way to have a bad junior high flashback because it makes you feel completely awkward (like a platypus. As my friend Sarah says "Fur AND fins? For real?") and as though you're standing against the wall in a gymnasium while "When I See You Smile" plays through a set of poorly rigged speakers and everyone else is dancing (assuming, of course, that you attended junior high in the late eighties. If not, insert the appropriate "makes you feel like a loser, arbitrary slow dance song" there and the feeling will be similar). Once you're on the wrong foot -- for whatever reason -- it's nearly impossible to stop with the awkward, too. That's the worst part, I think. You can't lose it. Whatever caused the moment of "Oh crap, did that just happen?" is going to stick to and try to ruin any further interaction with the person with whom, up until that point, you were doing quite well.
Obviously, I am familiar with this phenomenon. I'm actually so familar with it that I have learned -- finally -- to be a little more forgiving when someone says something that puts them into "perhaps this is wrong foot territory" with me. Lord knows, being the Queen of All Blunders has very few perks, but one of them is this: I have learned to put things in a bubble and blow them away. Which, of course, means that I have learned that no one should be condemned to a lifetime of wrong feet and bad shoes.
I have learned to give second chances. I have also learned to take them when they're offered to me. And let me tell you, when someone has the grace to acknowledge that it's time you stood on BOTH your feet, the wrong one and the right one too, and that they can accept who you are and you can accept who they are and you can both then be cool with the fabulousness that you both possess?
There's not much better than that.
Love this! It is so true. I am not sure why the majority of the people out there are still stuck on "First Impressions are Everything" speech? In my mind, I am thinking if you only knew how much of a loss it is for you! Here, here to Second Chances!!!
ReplyDeleteI agree -- we all have off days when our inner fabulousness does not make itself known, and as such, can come off as less than who we are. It's nice to have the chance to show someone that who they thought you were due to a misguided or foolish moment is not necessarily the whole picture of who you are. (It is also nice to extend the courtesy of second chances to others, I think; having said that, if someone repeatedly shows you who s/he is? Believe them. As a wise woman once said, "If it looks like a duck AND quacks like a duck? Odds are good that it's a duck. Don't try to make it an elephant."
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