The second part of my realization came one day when I was leaving the store. He was on the phone with someone who must have known him personally. I was ready to leave so I just waved good-bye so that I wouldn’t interrupt his call. He responded to me out loud in saying good-bye as I was walking off. The person he was on the phone with must have asked him whom he was saying good-bye to because next I heard him say, “oh, it’s just this dude.” I don’t know if he knows that I heard him say that but it hit home. After working with him and after a few years of visiting with him and trusting him with my secretes, I’m just a dude in the store. Here I was starting to think that I have a good friend who I would like to hang out with more often and I’m just a dude in the store.
After thinking about it for a while I realized that I couldn’t really blame him. I already mentioned that we have similar personalities so it was easy for me to put myself in his shoes. He isn’t comfortable with me as more than an acquaintance. So put both parts of this realization together and I have the key to a lot of my problems. I wouldn’t want to be friends with me either. Now I understand the saying, “You can’t make someone like you until you like yourself.”
