Thursday, June 11, 2015

How to Win Friends and Influence People

Sitting in the back of my parent's minivan (or was it the Astro by then?) on the way to my first week at Camp Allen's overnight camp I clearly remember my dad's very solid advice: "Just tell the girls in your cabin this story and everyone will want to be your friend!" The story was a captivating, especially to a third grader, and involved little Jimmy in boy scout camp, a bunch of shaving cream, and a shower stall. I showed up at camp with my ginormous duffel, my bedside fan, and my ace in the hole story. I settled in for the night and began my tale.

I had a great week that first year at camp. How could I not? It was camp! I had candy and did arts and crafts every single day! I swam and swam and swam. Messy games, fun songs, more swimming (there wasn't actually that much to do in those days besides swim), it was a great week. The last night one of my bunk mates sat in my bed chatting. "You know," she remarked in that third grader candid kind of way, "you're pretty cool. It's too bad Regina George told all of us to not be your friend at the beginning of the week."

Luckily for me, I'd been too busy having fun to realize that I hadn't made any friends.

I've been going to boot camp on Friday mornings for about six months now. It's the same faces each week. And those are the faces that I tend to see on Mondays and Wednesdays as well. Most people go with a friend, but I fly solo as my workout buddy hates bootcamp (and is now preggo and traveling across the entire country for the next few months).

Last week we went outside to run and a group of girls commented on the skunk smell. "Oh, man!" I said, "When I was pregnant..." and proceeded to tell a fabulous story about being pregnant with my second child, a skunk smell caught in our car air conditioner, and throwing up on my feet.

Nailed it.

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