People are so quick to point the finger when others treat them badly that they fail to realize that they themselves can be assholes sometimes. Take me, for instance. I would hope that most folks think I’m a nice gal, but that doesn’t mean I’m incapable of being a pill when a situation arises. As one inevitably did last Friday night:
The scene was Dynamic Circus, a figure drawing workshop with a trio of exceptionally skilled contortionists for models, at the Gnomon Hangar. I was chatting with Justin Chiang, my co-worker on American Dad!, and my friend Andrea Berg, each of us zombified after a full day of work and amazed at how we could possibly be functional enough to draw in spite of it all. A hand on my shoulder brought the conversation to a halt, and I turned to face an unfamiliar man in a baseball cap, who then greeted me with a “welcome” that was so diplomatic, I thought he was one of the organizers of the event. Something about the way he was looking at me told me that he knew who I was, but I wasn’t sure how, and all I could do was stare at him blankly with wide eyes, completely unprepared for this sort of encounter; I’d be damned if the exhaustion I was talking about earlier wasn’t a factor in this.
He must have sensed my confusion because he said his name to me as if to jog my memory. Tim, it was. I guess the proper thing to have done at that point was to reply with an “Oh, hi Tim, I’m Kristina!” coupled with a handshake, but no, I had to be so engrossed in trying to figure out whether I had met this person before that I completely forgot my manners! I just repeated his name back to him as if he had spoken Latin, and he walked away, obviously finished with my severe lapse in social graces.
When I turned back to my friends, they were just as perplexed as I was.
“Does this happen to you all the time?” Andrea asked.
“Dude, I have no idea who that guy was!” I said. I am such a classy lady.
It was only when I saw the mysterious Tim talking to Nguyen Dong, who was sitting several seats away from me, during a subsequent break that I finally made the connection:
Oh, Tim Weber! Tim Weber that I met for the first time over a week prior for dinner and a drawing party at Nguyen’s house. That Tim! Oh, my Lord…
Of course, I did the proper thing by going over to him to apologize and explain my side of things. He had been wondering why I had acted so coldly towards him, and now he knew that none of it had anything to do with him; though he jokingly mentioned that his hat could have been the culprit in my befuddlement.
Needless to say, we had a good laugh over the whole thing, and we all sketched happily ever after, yada yada yada, the end!
Point is, whether we realize it or not, we all screw up in the etiquette department from time to time. So never take things personally when someone treats you less than favorably. You have only to look at yourself to realize that oftentimes, the actions of others have nothing to do with you. Maybe they’re having a bad day, or in my case, they have a tendency to freeze up like a deer in headlights when they have no idea what’s going on or who the heck they’re talking to. We’re all just doing the best we can. For realsies, yo.