“I'm worried I don’t know how to get in touch with people,” Ezra said.
“Hmm?”
"I'm worried if I come too close they’ll say I'm overstepping. They’ll say I'm pushy, or… emotional, you know. But if I back off, they might think I don’t care. I really, honestly believe I missed some rule that everyone else takes for granted; I must have been absent from school that day. There’s this narrow little dividing line I somehow never located.”
“Nonsense; I don’t know what you're talking about,” said his mother, and then she held up an egg. “Will you look at this? Out of one dozen eggs, four are cracked. Two are smushed. I can’t imagine what Sweeney Brothers is coming to, these days.”
Ezra waited a while, but she didn’t say any more. Finally, he left.
Yes indeed, that's a difficult one. Where do you draw the line between being over-friendly and being too standoffish? Guess I was also absent from school that day 'cause I grapple with it all the time.
ReplyDeleteYou know, I used to feel exactly like Ezra does, especially when I was younger. I'd see people interacting and I'd feel like they were all obeying some unwritten rules, and I didn't know what were those rules. I think I missed a week of lessons. But I'm better now, mainly because I don't think quite so much anymore!
ReplyDeleteOuch. What a mom. Poor Exra. Are mothers like that today?
ReplyDeleteHmmm, i've done the Ezra a lot too, haven't learnt even in this ripe old age.
ReplyDeleteJ & diary: It’s so very difficult. Sometimes you’d meet someone new, someone you really liked and you think who also liked you, you had some great times and you're hoping for better times to come and then suddenly poof! they disappear off the face of the earth, or act like total strangers the next time you see them. Then you’d ask yourself, what did I do wrong, was I a bit overfriendly, irritatingly cheerful, was I too overbearing, too much at once? If I had held back a bit would things have changed? Who can clearly define the exact dose of enthusiasm and eagerness and involvement to administer to a relationship?
ReplyDeleteKima: Yeah poor Ezra. His mother is more concerned about the state of her grocery than the emotional state her children are in. I wouldn’t be surprised to find real life mothers like this, people are so selfish nowadays.
mesjay: What ripe old age are you talking about? Tell us more about soulmates. You said they exist. How did you know he was The One, was there some eureka moment, some epiphany kind of thing in which you said yes this person before is my soulmate; or was it just a slow and gradual realization, kind of like something that grows on you? What if we go and declare yes he/she is my soulmate and we turned out to be wrong? Does that mean our judgment was completely and totally off-track and we don’t even know ourselves? Shed some light, will you?
my dear,
ReplyDeletei have always been ezra as long as i remember. but i guess its okay for i am used to it now. the problem with the world today is that we care too much of what people think. we should just go ahead and do what we want.