Go Ahead, Make My Day…

Most evenings, I ask my 15-year old son the same litany of questions: How was your day? Anything interesting to report? Did anything good happen? Did anything bad happen? Did you do anything to make someone else’s day better? Because he is a 15-year old boy, the answer is usually “Fine” to the first question, and “No” to the remaining ones. Although getting actual word responses versus grunts should be considered a win, I always try to press a little on the last question, because I want him to be a leader, and I want him to understand the importance of his actions, and how they affect other people. I want to encourage him to reach out to others, and do his best to bring out the good in those around him. I want him to develop people-skills that will benefit him for the rest of his life. When I ask him if he smiles at people, he tells me that he only smiles at people he knows, because to do otherwise would be viewed as “weird”. I find that so sad, but then I have to remember, I am not in a huge urban high school, trying to tread lightly and make it safely through each day…

High school can be a precarious time for many people; some look back on those years as their “glory days”, and others view it as some version of Hell which they were required to endure, without having any say in the matter. We hear about so much tragedy in the news: teen suicides, and school shootings perpetrated by the quiet kids, or the ones who were bullied, or the ones who felt invisible or isolated. Everyone always acts surprised, but I wonder, if everyone was totally honest, whether anyone should be surprised. And more importantly, was there something that could have been done to make those people feel seen, heard, included and valued?

For the most part, I very much enjoyed my school years, but like any teenager, I had my ups and downs. For some reason, a memory from high school popped into my head recently.  It took place in a class in which the yearbook staff worked to produce the school annual, named “Mesika”, which means “yours”, or “you-together” in Chinook.  Our mascot was the Chiefs, (which has been since changed to something more PC, though by my calculations was a perfectly complimentary name, but nobody asked me), and seemed a very fitting name for the yearbook.   By nature, it was a class that was loosely structured, mostly unsupervised, and lent itself to collaborating in small groups…in other words, spending the hour chatting freely about anything and everything was okay. Staring out the window was not frowned upon, but rather was viewed as an indication that you must be thinking very hard about something clever to insert in the yearbook captions.

I was reflecting back on a comment made to me by a classmate one day in the Spring of my senior year, which I found amusing and startling at the time, but ultimately took as a compliment. It came at a point when I was feeling particularly invisible. The bestower was a boy I had known for at least six years. He was a handsome, gregarious athlete, and very popular with the ladies, especially the younger ones.  My friend usually held court by sitting perched on a desk, with his adoring gaggle of underclass females surrounding him, vying for his attention.

One afternoon, I was doing the stare-out-the-window thing, maybe thinking of something clever, or then again, maybe not, and he came over to me and said “You are very mysterious.” I laughed, and said I was probably the least mysterious person you could find. If you know me, you know I am an open book, you only have to ask. I was the same back then. I imagine I was mostly viewed as a bubbly extrovert and a talker (burbler?), prone to over-sharing and easy, loud laughter, and not viewed as a person who took things very seriously. I definitely had a darker side, and an inner life that kept me quite busy, but I thought that I kept that part well hidden.

His comment tickled me, and it has stayed with me all these years. In thinking about it now, and wondering why it has stuck with me, here is what I have come up with: This very popular person of the opposite sex took the time to observe me, took the time to acknowledge that maybe there was more to me than met the eye, and then took the time to say something to me about it.  The reason I decided to take it as a compliment, whether or not that was the intent, was that it made me feel that maybe I was not invisible, after all.   That it was possible for another person to see that there was more to me, that the “more” might be intriguing enough to someone, someday, that they would want to get to know me better, and then like what they found.  That maybe I could be viewed as “deep” or “thoughtful” or something more meaningful and important than how others perhaps viewed me.   At that point in my life, on that particular Spring day, that was the greatest gift anyone could have given me.

I also think about a sweet thing that another friend wrote to me in my yearbook, just before graduation that year. He wrote that he remembered “watching my face in third grade”. I wonder what he thought about how I had changed between the ages of 8 and 18…if he thought the changes were good or less than good, or maybe he thought I had not changed at all. It delighted me to know that I had been seen, watched, and remembered fondly.

I think now about things I have said to others, and wonder if any off-hand comments I have made might have had such lasting impact. If so, I wonder if that impact was good, or if I have left steely barbs that still lie, imbedded and painful. I pray that I have left more people feeling good than bad. I try to say as many nice, insightful things as I can, and hope that the recipients view them as sincere, and that they feel uplifted, and seen, and valued.

I will share this story with my son tonight, after I quiz him about his day, to remind him that things that we say and do can lift a person up, shape how they think and feel about themselves, and that we have such enormous power to do good. That we can affect the course of a life, and that we can change the world, one smile at a time. That we can make someone’s day…or their year…and even, possibly, leave them with a gift that lasts a lifetime.

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To my two dear friends, I say “Thank you”, and if you know who you are, send me a message…we are friends on Facebook!
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