I’m A Little Man

I’m beginning to become more aware of one of my flaws. It’s making me feel more uncomfortable the more it’s unveiled. It all started in Halifax. We were sitting around a pub, everyone was sampling new beers (because they had hundreds to choose from) and I was gulping down a cold glass of water complete with a lemon taking random sips from everyone else’s beer seeing which one I liked. It was the second night that we found ourselves in this exact pub. Each time we sat down I would make sure I faced away from the TV so I wasn’t distracted from the conversation by looking at the big screen.

There was about ten of us in total. We were all good friends who haven’t been together in about three years. It was great. The conversation started to spiral, for the second night in a row, headfirst to a long nail-biting conversation about baseball, then hockey, then football, then basketball and then back to hockey. Needless to say I was bored out of my mind. I used to love sports and would be all up in the conversation. In fact, at one point Phil and I collected hockey cards and I owned a leaf jersey that I would wear when they played. I was a hardcore fan.

This night though, I was bored. So I do what I always do when I’m bored. I’m a smart ass. I would make dumb comments. Comments with no relevance at all to the conversation, but say a trigger word that would make them think that I was actually saying something worth listening too. When they realized it was just BS, they would ignore me and continue. I enjoyed this as a form of entertainment for a good twenty or thirty minutes. Finally I had enough and questioned ‘do we really have to talk about sports, it’s so boring, let’s talk about something else.’

I figured that if I was serious enough and bugged them enough they would eventually talk about something that I could be involved in. Instead Phil looked at me and said ‘Nathan, it always has to involve you doesn’t it? Why does it have to be about you? Why can’t we have a conversation without you?’ It was in that moment, that a friends honesty had shut me up. He was right. In that moment, I was being selfish cause I wanted to be involved. I couldn’t be content not being involved and part of the conversation.

Now I’m noticing this in more parts of my life. If there is a game going on and I’m bored, I’ll bug people and say stupid things and go into that mode again. Somehow using my cunning ability to re-involve me or for it to center around me.

I don’t like this flaw. I’m prideful and can’t just allow life to go on without me. It’s like I’m so important that I should be part of every possible conversation, activity and idea that happens around me.

Oh, Let my pride fall down, I’m a little man.
Supertones