You’ve got to have a great opening line.
Well, how was it? Are you sweating with anticipation for the rest of the piece? Have you stopped reading? While in many cases the adage holds up, it’s not as black and white as most creative writers like to think. To prove it’s not as black and white, I’m going to ignore the fact that the people who stopped reading don’t know they proved me wrong.
Similarly, the first impression is not as critical as many push it to be. I should know, I’ve seen several people on multiple occasions and I’m equal parts annoying and dull on the first go-around. Of course, no matter how many times we reassure ourselves life does not work solely in absolutes, we still strive for a perfect opening line and a perfect first impression.
A few weeks ago I was awkwardly sitting in a living room with a guy I’d just met (let’s call him…Rubbafield. Wait, no, let’s call him, Carl). We made innocuous chit chat while his girlfriend, another person I’d just met grabbed another drink from the fridge (she will be called…Rubba- no, wait, Carla).
I’d known Carl and Carla for only about 15 minutes, but I could tell that a good first impression would be to my benefit. It’s not that I saw an advantage to a relationship with them; it’s just that they seemed nice, intelligent and smart enough to know that I’d just used two words to describe them that are the same.
During a critical awkward pause, I started telling a story about my breakfast – It may be boring, but it’s better than me asking Carl which Civil War battle represented him. The only noteworthy aspect of my breakfast was that the soy milk I had poured on my cereal was thick, chunky and had gone bad. When I finished describing the slobbery gook that fell out of the carton, Carl started howling in delight, as if he’d never assumed something like that could happen. Carl continued to laugh as Carla came in the room. “What’s so funny,” she asked.
Before I could retell my rotten soy milk story, Carl jumped in. “He put rotten soy milk on his cereal because it’s his first time using soy milk and he didn’t know it could go bad.”
Carl’s version was a tad bit altered from my original tale. ‘So this is what Charles Dickens felt like when he saw Michael Bay ruin his classic work, Transformers: Pips’ Revenge,’ I thought. Somewhere in my telling of the story, Carl had deduced that not only was I a complete novice to soy milk acquisition, but that I was too stupid to know soy milk could go bad.
All of a sudden I felt my first impression had the potential of sliding downhill. I didn’t want these people thinking I was a soy milk novice and that I’m in no way capable of understanding the properties of perishable goods applies to milks not from cows. I knew I shouldn’t care, but for some reason, it felt like it mattered.
Part of me wanted to wait until Carl finished a story and then say, “Did you hear that Carla? Carl hasn’t set up the new speaker system because he’s stupid and doesn’t know that electronics need electricity.” That seemed like justice to me. Yeah, it would be a bit over the top, but at least they wouldn’t know me as the guy who didn’t know squat bout soy. I wouldn’t have to worry about them deciding who to invite to their wedding and going, “I don’t know…that guy’s knowledge of soy milk was a little wanting.”
I knew the answer was to let it go. Not to worry about such minor and trivial things.
Then I thought, ‘if Carl exaggerated the story this much just since the three seconds I told it to him, what’s going to happen if he retells the story to other people?’ I pictured myself standing at a BBQ and having someone come up to me and say, “Aren’t you the guy who discovered oil and then sold it for rotten soy milk because you didn’t know oil was valuable?”
That, I couldn’t live with. The other option, besides letting it go or being rude, was to politely correct Carl so Carla knew the truth. Unfortunately, that meant letting everyone know that the altered story bothered me significantly and would give away why I was rocking so much since Carl told the story. That, I couldn’t bear to stand.
I was forced to suck it up and hope they drank enough not to remember the horrible details of my spoiled breakfast. Because no matter what we think we can control, first impressions are based on how people perceive you, not on how you think you are. A man fascinated with pin wheels might love me because my hair reminds him of one he saw in Holland. A women deeply saddened by her grandmother’s death might despise me because I can’t stop mentioning how much I hate butterscotch. You just never know.
What you do know is that, just like you, the people you’re meeting are too busy wondering if their soy milk knowledge is upsetting you, to make an opinion of you at all. First impressions are a two party dance and while you’re focusing on not stepping on any toes, they’re struggling to keep their feet out of the way.
