It’s funny how things occur to you when you are older, and you think “Wow. If I’d only known.”

Am I right? How often did you assume something that you found out later just wasn’t correct?

The usual reason we assume things is because we are self-centered people.  Everything is about us – how people treat us, react to us, and so on. Most of the time, the way people are has nothing to do with us.

Have you dealt with this before? Where I come from, people are friendly almost all the time and those who are sour or sullen stand out like a sore thumb.  

My hometown was dubbed “Home of Friendly People” once; I kid you not. I like to joke that many people there are overly friendly because they want to know all your business. But really, I grew up in a place where people were usually pretty congenial and kind.

There was an old gal who was what I mentioned above: sort of sour and sullen. She had sort of a twist on her face like Dana Carvey’s “Church Lady” from Saturday Night Live. Her face seemed to always be in a judgmental, condescending smirk.

Kids would say, “That lady is an old crab.” Adults probably said it also.

I just always figured this lady didn’t like me much. I’m sure most people thought the same thing.  When I was much older and lived away from home for a long time, I ran into this lady on a visit home.  

 “Well Mark, I haven’t seen you in so long. How are you doing?”

It was the first time I had seen her smile. I didn’t know she had teeth. Had I been closer, I think she would have grabbed me and hugged me. We stood and talked for a long time, and I will admit I was a tad bit uncomfortable, but more dumbfounded than uncomfortable.

A few years later, her husband, who I knew to be the more outgoing of the two and much more personable, passed away. Now, my impression of this guy has always been that he was just a nice guy. Always ready with a smile and handshake, he was practically the polar opposite of his wife.

When he passed away, I found out he was a notorious control freak who really ran every aspect of his wife’s life. He was also a tightwad who wouldn’t pay bills – even when he owed money to good, family friends. His outward personality did not reflect his inner self, though I can’t claim to know all about his inner self.

Looking back, I remember thinking his two grown children were sullen and sour, just like his wife.  Some people thought they were all just stuck up.  

You can’t assume things, can you?

One of my good buddies in high school had a crush on this girl. I told him all along she liked him too. I was sure of it. But, he assumed she liked someone else and because he never made the move to ask her on a date, she went out with other guys and eventually went “steady” (boy, that’s an old term) with one of them.  

My buddy just assumed this girl liked him as a good friend. Not so.

I still think to this day that they would have made a great couple.  

But really, how many times have we found out, in hindsight, we were wrong about someone? We assumed someone was stuck up or stand-off-ish or didn’t like us. When all along, it had nothing to do with us. 

Those people weren’t paying any attention to us.  They had their own issues to worry about.

I reconnected with a friend from high school when social media amped up. He had gone through some stuff, and we started emailing with one another, catching up and talking over old times. I told him I always looked up to him and that I thought everyone in high school thought he was pretty cool.

“You really thought that?  I never felt that way. I was always struggling with my home life and my parents’ dysfunction. I was always putting on a good show at school.”

I had no idea. In turn, he told me I had always “seemed pretty sure of myself and had always been so kind to everyone; comfortable in my own skin.”

This was not the case either. I was just as self-conscious as any teenager when we were in school. I may have been friendly, but I certainly didn’t like everyone all the time. I wouldn’t have described myself as a kind person, and I was definitely never comfortable in my own skin back then.

I’m sure we all wonder sometimes what life would have been like had we let our guard down more. All people are struggling with at least a little something, aren’t they?  

We can’t spend our lives assuming.