You Don't Know Me! (Or Maybe You Do . . . )

I’m super excited to have been invited to join a blog group alongside three talented bloggers.  Each week, one of us chooses a topic and we all post a blog entry on that topic, usually on Thursdays.   

Here are the links to the other fabulous blogs:

Merryland Girl

Froggie

Moma Rock

This week’s topic comes from Froggie, who asked us to write about something no one would ever guess about you.  Here’s my take:

                   I thought a lot about Froggie’s topic over this past week.  I struggled because I don’t have a hidden talent or super power or even a deep, dark secret.  I would not say I am an open book, but it seems to me although no one person knows everything about me, cumulatively everyone in my life knows everything about me.  What one person doesn’t know, someone else does.  I had a hard time imagining one “thing” that no one would guess about me. 

                  And then I remembered a Facebook post I put up a week ago and the comments that flowed from the post.  The post was a link to a Salon article discussing out-of-body experiences (OBEs).  (Here’s a link to the article:  http://www.salon.com/2012/04/21/near_death_explained/).  The article interested me because I’d had an OBE many years ago, during oral surgery, and I said as much when I shared the story.  A good friend of mine commented and said, “How did I not know this about you??”  I laughed and wrote, “I don’t ever really think about it!”  As such, I don’t ever really talk about it. 

                  Molly’s reaction amused me.  It also endeared her to me (not that she needed help in that area).  Molly and I met last summer at a writing workshop, and we became fast friends.  In the nine months we’ve known each other, we’ve talked a lot – on the phone, over email – and we’ve shared quite a bit about ourselves with the other (she’s also one of the only people who has read the entire draft manuscript of the book I’ve been writing, which supplied a LOT of personal info).  To Molly, an OBE is a bit of a big deal, and so she wondered how, as good friends, we’d never discussed it.  On one level, her reaction made sense; on another, so did my answer.

                  People take one of two actions with “big” pieces of information:  they share them, or they hide them for dear life.  I’d never mentioned the OBE because I hadn’t thought about it in years.  In all honesty, I don’t know that I’ve ever told anyone about it, other than maybe my Mom way back when it happened in 4th Grade.  It’s not that I hid the event, it’s more that OBEs don’t regularly come up in my conversations; the memory was nudged only because of the Salon article.  To me, the OBE wasn’t a big deal.  It didn’t change my life or my perception (it just made me never again want to have teeth pulled . . . ).  Because it did not seem important, I had never thought to share it.

                  Froggie’s topic suggestion seems simple on its face:  offer a piece of information about yourself others don’t know and likely wouldn’t guess.  But, in reality, her topic implicates a whole host of subtleties.  It calls into question the basic nature of relationships:  whom do we trust and what do we share?  It also implicates the context in which the relationships are formed and grow.  For example, on the schoolyard when I pick up my kids, more than one parent has seemed surprised when learning I’m an attorney.  Conversely, a similar shock has been sparked in co-workers when they discovered that I’m the mother of three kids – one of whom is essentially grown.  Their surprise is contextual; the moms and dads know me as a mom, not a lawyer, and the lawyers know me as a peer, and not a mom.  (And standing on the playground in my jeans holding my kid’s backpack, I don’t exactly scream “licensed professional”!) 

                  Similarly, the friends I’ve known forever, with whom I attended years of Catholic school, might be surprised to learn I no longer practice any religion and that I didn’t marry in church or baptize my kids.  Of course, their surprise comes from knowing me as a practicing Catholic.  My “newer” friends wouldn’t be surprised; they all know I don’t practice anything.  But would those friends ever be able to guess that every Easter season, I go out of my way to watch Godspell on television – and that I have a copy of the soundtrack in my car?  Maybe.

                  In my heart, I don’t believe there is one thing about me that others could not guess or would be surprised to learn.  I’m just not that interesting.  But I do know that there are many things about me that some people wouldn’t guess but that would not surprise a bunch of other people.  I could list many:  I avoid caffeine; I am fascinated by the Amish; I get night terrors; I lived through the Northridge earthquake (seven miles from the epicenter); I don’t know how to swim; I am afraid of amusement parks when they are closed for the season (stupid Scooby-Doo); I’m a whiz at legal research but hate going to court; I’m not really a blond.  But I believe this is how it is supposed to be.  Part of growing a relationship includes the gradual back and forth, the give and the take, the well-paced exchange of information.  How strange would it be to meet someone and tell them everything – not to mention how impossible?  Isn’t half the fun of a relationship learning new bits about each other, of finding out how much you have in common, how alike you are in ways you couldn’t have possibly known?

                  Which brings me back to Molly.  As I mentioned, we met at a writing workshop, an event that spanned from Thursday night through Sunday.  The first night, at dinner, we sat across from each other and quickly discovered we are both attorneys and both have young kids close in age.  It was enough to keep us talking through the meal, and to lead us to sit near each other the next morning.  At that meal, Molly began telling a story about two former co-workers whom she helped set up and who are now married.  Half way through her story, I realized she was talking about a good friend of mine from law school – someone who had spoken to me about Molly many, many times.  Right then, I suddenly knew a bunch more about Molly . . .  and she didn’t have to say another word.  But she did.  And I’m glad. 

                  And so, Molly, I swear I didn’t not tell you about the OBE.  It just didn’t occur to me.  But any time you’d like to discuss my fear of abandoned roller coasters or my favorite episode of Amish Mafia, you just give me a call.