Do I look like a self-obsessed twit in this?

Do you ever wonder if random people from your past ever think of you? I don't mean people you loved or who loved you, or people you grew up with and knew for a very long time, or relatives you've lost touch with, or people you married in what turned out to be the biggest mistake of your life. I mean people who were on the periphery of your life ... maybe you were friends of a friend of theirs 15 years ago and you went on an awkward weekend ski trip together, or they met you for the first time at a New Year's Eve party and insisted that you feel their new boobs to see just how real they seem, or maybe you worked together for a couple of years when you were very young before both of you moved on to bigger and better things.

I always assumed the answer was no. Seriously! I mean, think about the sheer number of people with whom you have this kind of non-relationship and think about how slim the chances are that they remember you -- let alone actually think of you. Can you remember the names of half of the people you worked with at your first job out of college? I can't.

Well it turns out that somebody from my past -- someone I worked with at my first job out of college in fact -- has been thinking of me. And it also turns out that this person hasn't been thinking very nice things about me.

About a year ago I wrote an entry about being a newbie reporter and my editor at that time, who was the best writing teacher I ever had and who had such an impact on me that I still hear his booming voice in my head sometimes. Sometime last night someone left a nasty anonymous comment on that entry claiming they knew me then and that I was an obnoxious, self-obsessed twit ... and adding that it looked like I hadn't changed very much in the last 10 (OK, 13) years. They said some other crap, too, but that was the sentence that felt most like a punch in the stomach.

Meanwhile, what they said is partly true. Of course I was an obnoxious twit -- I was twenty-something years old, for Christ's sake. I think the more remarkable thing would be to find a recent college grad of that age who isn't one. As for being self-obsessed back then, I'm not sure where that comes from. What I remember of that time is feeling woefully inadequate and unprepared and completely incompetent. I recall feeling like an outsider there, as well -- someone who didn't fit in with my more experienced and seemingly more confident co-workers.

Maybe I was a better actor than I thought.

As for today? Of course it's just a joke to read one entry in someone's friggin' blog and pronounce them self-obsessed. Uh, hello? I write a blog that's mostly about me and my life ... How am I supposed to do that without coming off as self-obsessed? If you don't like it -- and this is just a suggestion, here -- maybe you shouldn't read it.

Of course now I'm thinking of all of the people I worked with back then, trying to remember all of their names, and hoping that the anonymous chicken who wrote that comment is the mean stuck-up girl I never liked anyway, and not the cute guy I had a wicked secret crush on ...
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