Would you borrow a book from this man?
It has come to my attention that there are a number of people who seem to think I might be a bit scary and not to be crossed. I find this mildly amusing. There seem to be two main camps who hold this view.
The first group of people are those who have met me briefly and said to themselves: “He has really short hair and blocks out the sun – he must be a hard nut”. The second group are those who have heard me rant – or who have been the subject of a rant – about something on which I have a defined opinion.
The second group, I think, is slightly larger – if only because most people who have actually met me know that I’m a complete softy within every day parameters. I’ve only really become aware of this second group through a series of conversations with colleagues over the Christmas period. Before Christmas I was a bit upset when Grinch-like forces decided to take down the Christmas decorations put up by Lady P in her last week at the library. The second week in December, and the decorations came down…
I may have been a little direct in expressing my opposition, dismay and scorn for such a turn of action, but then we all got on with working and didn’t think much more about it – until I got back to work this week and had a number of people approach me and apologise for perfectly normal things that they had done while I was away – like cleaning up certain messy areas, or taking down old displays, or filing things in a new place, or clearing decorations from the children’s library. One person apparently refused to follow orders to do something because “I don’t want Tim to rant at me.”
I’m not entirely sure that I know how I feel about this. While the stories have largely been relayed to me with a cheeky and teasing tone, I’m not comfortable having a reputation as an ogre of any description. I’m reasonably sure that this still isn’t the case, but as one of the symptoms of my more manic side can be an inflated sense of importance and achievement, along with arrogance and restless energy to brush all before me I’m still keeping a wary eye on it.
What I do seem to have started doing though, is deploying weapons-grade sarcasm and foible-skewering through truth telling. I definitely seem to have less tolerance for people expecting unquestioning compliance with their directives, and I have a rather more pointed sense of humour than usual. I shall, for now, mainly be trying to not be a dick. But the thought of people thinking I’m scary does amuse me.
