Me

            Four weeks ago at an Emergency Operations Committee meeting, I was sent down the hall to make copies. Knowing I had no claim to the office’s supply of paper or ink, I braced myself for a confrontation with the receptionist over the 50 copies my VISTA coworkers had sent me to make.

            Walking back down the hall with a stack of 50 warm, freshly copied forms in my hand, I complemented myself on inspiring such an affable response from the receptionist.

            It struck me approximately three feet past the women’s restroom and five feet before I rounded the corner to the conference room. Her response had little whatsoever to do with me. At that moment my egocentricity and pride were equally appalling.

            It has been a moment I have been reminded of frequently in the last month. Daily I have hung up the phone wondering what I said to offend, irritate, anger, upset, humor, or please the caller. At first I thought that it was a function of the caller’s age: I did best with the elderly and worse with the middle aged. Then I thought it was a function of the caller’s sex: I did better with men than I did women. Then I thought it was a function of the inflection of my voice, pace of speech, or phase of the moon, which is to say that none of my theories held explanatory power because I seemed incapable of grasping the fact that other peoples’ reactions had more to do with themselves than with me.

            If people sound stressed or worried when they call, they are probably more stressed by the fact that they cannot get their possessions out of a moldy house than by the tone in which I answer the phone. If people seem pleased after talking to me on the phone, their decision to express gratitude is a better explanation for their happiness than my ability to communicate clearly with a certain age group.

            By forging a causal linkage between peoples’ responses to our telephone conversations and myself, instead of a correlation between the two, I had been placing myself at the center of my theories. It was the realization that I had been trying to explain the world in terms of myself that struck me so suddenly walking back to the conference room. My shame of my egocentricity was equal only to my horror that, for once, my little sister was right – it appears that everything is not all about me.