May 16th, 2008,  a Friday

First impressions are more than important.  This applies to meeting someone or even the first line of a book or a song.  If you meet someone, and you don't make a good impression, why would they ever want to have anything else to do with you?  Unless they had to and that would be even worse.  This is both a handicap and a benefit to me, depending on the situation.  A lot of people think that meeting a bear is stupid and dismiss me out of hand.  Others are fascinated by meeting a bear and give me more of a chance than they might someone else. 

If the first line of a book doesn't get me, it is unlikely that I will continue to read.  That may sound unfair, selfish and immature but that's just the way it is.  For example, I love this one..."I am a White man and never forgot it, but I was brought up by the Cheyenne Indians from the age of ten".  As you know, I have dozens of stories similar to this one about my past.  He is writing fiction so no one says he is lying.  But when you speak a story like that instead of write it, people call it a lie.  Why is that?  Do I have to say, for example, I lived with gypsies for 3 weeks in a forest in Spain but please know that my story is a product of my overactive imagination which, thank God, I still have in tact and it is good for you to hear because most likely you don't still have yours in tact and haven't thought up a good story since you were 5 years old!  Did that sound hostile?

Song wise, I have a few current favorites that are subject to change depending on what I am listening to at any time or whether I hear a new one that really strikes my fancy.  As you know, Marvin Gaye has been hanging around me lately so I like "you do me wrong but still I'm crazy about you".  (Maybe that means I need a therapist but I still like it.)  Or that old Girl Scout round, "make new friends, but keep the old", just darned good advice.  Or the Cure singing "I've been looking so long at these pictures of you that I almost believe that they're real".  (Uh oh, that's two to discuss with the therapist.  Could be stalking or hallucinations, drug induced.)   Or who can forget "I was alone, I took a ride, I didn't know what I would find there".  Most of the time in these cases you love that first line and then can't remember the next one or the one after that.  But who cares.   

My friend went to the doctor who said she might have a serious problem.  But she doesn't know for sure yet.  This is a different kind of first impression and she has no choice but to wait and find out how this one is going to shape her life.  Maybe it will be unwelcome news and she will embark on a journey that will forever change her in some way as yet unknown.  Or maybe it will be a false alarm that will suddenly make her realize that it is pretty great to wake up each day and not have to worry so much about what tomorrow will bring.  When we first moved into our new house on the lake, she brought us a gift that hangs on the kitchen wall.  I have always loved it and take the time to look at it again and again.  It is a colored glass angel.  She is smiling with black, long, wiry hair that is flying straight up in the air as though the ground was blowing wind at her feet.  Each arm is a different color, one kelly green and the other soft orange.  She is wearing a long royal blue dress with a huge bright red heart in the middle of her chest.  But she is holding a smaller heart in her hand as well that is suspended straight up in the air like a lollypop from the kelly green arm.  Her feet are pretty dangly beads that match her orange arm.  Her wings are not translucent like the rest of her, they are solid white glass with blue stripes.  I am hoping that maybe this first impression, whatever it plays out to be, will help my friend combine the heart in her chest with the one she holds in her hand.  Because all the colors of her are so pretty, even though they are kind of a crazy combination.   This is my wish for you (which is the first line of one of my favorite books). 

You will make a first impression probably more than once today.  And others may be presented to you.  If you are lucky.  Almost everything in your life started as a first impression.  The first time you saw your dog, the first time you tasted ice cream, or the first time someone hurt your feelings.  Can you imagine if one of today's first impressions becomes as important as one of those?  You never know.

GR