Sunday Night With John: The Wildcard
/In last week’s post, I mentioned being the wild card in my family. There is a story behind how I ended up being the wild card; it didn’t used to be that way. I was a rather shy kid growing up and really afraid to stick out in a crowd. I always needed someone with me to try new things and had to be talked into a lot. There wasn’t a confidence with how I stood on my own two feet. If you had asked my mom or dad at that time, public speaker would have been the last thing our their list of things I would become. I vividly remember in 8th grade not being able to talk around certain people and in 9th grade I remember wishing not to be noticed.
My life changed course the day my dad died in a car accident. I went from having two parents, to one, and then over the following years, three. My sister, and brother took on more prominent roles in my life has I turned out to be not that easy to handle. A number of movies and television shows often joke about the moment you start to sound like your mom, or dad. I often chuckle at four moments, when I sound like my mom, dad, brother and sister. Having four parental figures shaped my personality into something my family still is trying to come to grips with.
With my dad being my biggest influence from 5th grade to the summer before 10th grade I marveled at his ability to problem solve and look at situations from many different angles. I practiced that over and over again on the basketball court, in the classroom, and with my social interactions.
I spent the most time with my mom after the accident and my mom has this endless well of energy. She could star in an add for the energizer battery. Being around that type of energy paid off for me as I have begun to tackle life with the same type of go-go attitude and it has only grown over the years.
I was rather angry teen-ager often challenging adults left and right in my home and at school. My sister was my high school teacher but I didn’t think of challenging her, she was just too calm and I couldn’t get a raise out of her. I wanted that quality because I respected it so much. I spent years working to regulate my emotions so I could respond in a way that would help the situation not hurt.
My brother who had to be the big giant wall to stop my anger carried himself with such confidence. He never seemed to worry about failure because he was so sure he wouldn’t fail or learn quickly from it. I started to work to build my shaky self-esteem up to where I felt that type of confidence.
There you have it, I’m a high energy, calm, confident, problem solver because of the four people who shaped my life. That is why they call me the wild card because they don’t know what I’ll tell them when we chat it up the phone. Through the years I have called to inform them that I just got done hiking through the bad lands, I’ll text them a picture of me dressed up as a lepurchaun for St. Patties day, tell them a story about how my friends are doing an outdoor living room (I’ll do a post on this one day to explain), or how I’m getting ordained to officiate my best friends wedding.
We live imprints on our children, friends, significant others, and families and they pick up our habits, traits, and qualities. We must remember that we influence our friends, as I remind myself to smile big because Eric always did. We affect the people around us with our energy and it can be either contagious or infectious. How we problem solve our own lives can be an example for someone looking up to you or a cautionary tale. Whatever you do, don’t forget to look at your own life and remember there could be someone in your life shaping themselves after you, what have you given them to work with? What are your best qualities or your worst? My family may not have known it, but passing on their best qualities allowed me to grow into a better version of myself. I wear the wild card badge in my family loud and proud. I’m the WILD CARD BABY!