I've been wondering the past few days when I would find something I to discuss. Some weeks my life is so boring I feel it would be unethical to bother anyone else with tales from it. But, my weekly poker game being the font of philosophical and ethical stimulus that it is I have arrived at a situation to ponder.

One of the fellows asked, as a few of us were sitting on the porch enjoying the night air, if we felt that high school really molded or forged who we are today. At least created the seeds of who we are today. I, with no deeper meaning or thought behind my answer, scoffed "Oh no, definitely not!" College and grad school have done more to "make me who I am" if one can countenance that phrase and while the seeds of my personality have always been with me from childhood, I feel that high school was most certainly a thing of the past. For me, personally, it wasn't a proving ground of any sort.

I didn't think this a particularly unique answer. Of the people I know intimately, we run the gambit of possibilities from experiences in high school having significant effect on who we are or what we've become to those that simply survived high school and started life after. After giving my answer the fellow who had first put forth this idea became...not upset, but, perhaps, put out. He told me that it seemed like I was too constructed in my answers to these types of questions--that I appear to be trying to hard to be different. He didn't feel I was being genuine; he believed that I believed my answer, or wanted to believe my answer, but that I was deluding myself to some degree.

Well, naturally, this sparked a whole new conversation of it's own. The irony being that he is an extremely constructed individual--more than simply guarded it appears at times as if those things he likes have been picked and chosen for how they appear to others more than how they make him feel--and I was surprised with the passion my supposedly disingenuous answer produced. He told me he liked it when I talked about the comic book stuff because he felt like I was being honest then; I obviously really enjoyed it. But when talking about who we are or what we think I just didn't fit what he thought I ought to be. I had too much staked in not being simplistic. I believe the best analogy was when he said, "you know, you've got the balls and each goes in the hole--you know those games where you throw the balls in the hole? Well I've got most of the balls in the hole, but there're still a few that I can't figure out where they go."

I share this, mostly, because it's so darned entertaining. I mean, of all the times in my life I consciously try to pick the unique answer (usually revolving around email surveys) this time I was only saying what I believed and thought, not even expecting that it would be that different of an answer from others. I still don't believe my answer was that different, and honestly, I can't figure out what he expected. But all of this got me thinking about how often we assume we know more about someone than that person knows about herself. I explained to him that so long as he felt he knew me better than myself, no explanation I gave for why I thought as I did would sound genuine.

How often have I discounted what a friend or acquaintance as told me because I was so sure I knew better than they? How often have I listened to their assessment of themself and silently judged? Certainly with some people in some situations as an outside listener you absolutely know more than the person involved--that's why we talk to friends (or I talk to friends) because they can look at us and say don't be crazy, here's how it is. But those situations have given me license, I think, to believe in my godliness of understanding at times I didn't deserve it. And how wrong is it of me, how arrogant, to think I know a friend better than that friend knows herself?

Perhaps there isn't anything wrong with it, but in that way I suppose that is a characteristic of mine that has carried over from high school. For all the multiplicity of bad decisions I made in my teen years I constantly thought I knew more than those around me. I also thought I knew why they were so wrong in what they perceived. In my attempts to not engage in that behavior anymore I have learned to listen better to what people say and to trust in the validity of their perspective. This has, in turn, allowed me to learn significantly more from those around me than I was ever able to before. Being able to "know" people based on what they say has also made me more arrogant so that I sometimes assume I know and understand them better than they know or understand themselves. It's a horrible paradox, but I suppose if any part of me was "forged" in high school I would say that is it. The duality of what I learned and what I am in constant motion with itself.

So tell me, and be honest, am I trying to hard to be different?