Impressions

“Guess who this is?”

Diane and Annie were watching me perform impressions of various board members when I was at Softball Canada. Each one had a peculiarity, and after hours of meetings with them, I had each one down pat. I was so good at impersonating all of them that they had no problem identifying each one of them. Each time they got one right, we all laughed.

After a few minutes, Diane said to me, “Let me do one.”

She took her right hand and tugged on the material of her blouse on her left shoulder.

“Bob Van Impe?” I guessed.

Diane and Annie laughed.

“It’s Glenn Reeve,” I declared.

Diane and Annie laughed harder.

“How about Duff Slavin?”

By now they were almost rolling over.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“It’s you,” chortled Diane, “You do it all the time.”

Watch any baseball game on television and you will know what I mean. As the batter prepares for the pitch, you will see many of them tug at the cloth on their shoulder. He needs to stretch the material a bit to feel more comfortable.

My heart sank. Part of my job was meeting people all of the time. When I thought of how I might have been doing this unconsciously, I was embarrassed. I also wondered if my doing this made others uncomfortable.

Right then and there I decided to conquer this. I told Diane and Annie to mirror my actions if I ever did this again.

The first few weeks were difficult. It almost looked like I was getting them hooked on the habit. As I became more aware of what was happening, I was able to correct the situation.

It has made me think about how many other things in our lives that we may be blind about. We may be totally unaware of our bad habits out of ignorance. It’s not that we want to make people uncomfortable. We don’t know we are doing it.

I look back on many incidents in my life where I know I would have handled things differently. While I wasn’t a bad person, I acted badly because I didn’t know any better.

If people don’t tell us, then how will we know? It comes down to the age-old question of whether you tell somebody his fly is open or not.

Unless we are aware of the problem, there is no way we can ever hope to find the solution. While some may think it is cruel pointing out the flaw in somebody else, if it is done with love, or in Diane and Annie’s case, humour, it can help the person become better.

The way I look at it, I was happier suffering from the embarrassment of a habit that I eventually corrected than I would have been continuing doing something in ignorance that would have an undesirable effect in my relationships with people.

I don’t know who said that ignorance is bliss, but I don’t agree with him.