We each have one that is just as unique to us as our fingerprints.
We learn them, we inherit them, and we assimilate them our entire lives.
Then our role is over and a new cast goes through the motions of mouthing the words and playing the parts as the show must go on.
I think being nice should be the minimum requirements for everyone.
It doesn't cost you a thing.
I don't do well with negative people.
Being an asshole is a choice.
A bad choice.
Part of my skill set is the ability to relate to all people. I've been doing it since I was age 6 in Japan.
When possible, my mom did not allow us to stay on bases or other government installations when we were in foreign countries.
She opted, instead, to have us grow up amongst the indigenous people in their culture.
I was very proficient speaking Japanese, a skill since dissipated due to lack of use.
In one of the places we lived, there was a tiny strip of businesses clinging to a small dirt road, surrounded by terraced rice paddies and cornfields.
The boonies.
There was this one stone house that stood perched at the crest of a hill, overlooking the village and the rest of the valley.
Unseen, her reputation preceded her.
The meanest woman in all creation.
Not just in the village or the valley.
All creation.
As bad as it gets.
Crimson red hair, long fingernails, and a wicked laugh. She was supposedly also married four times, but no one knows anything about any of the deceased husbands.
But there were stories…
The police and even the Japanese army and government refused to go after her.
At least that's what we believed.
My stepfather came home with an autographed football from Los Angeles Rams great Roman Gabriel and he gave it to me as a present for skipping two grades in school. It would have been three, but mom put the kibosh on that, saying something about screwing me up socially or something.
I was running past the crazy lady's house to my friends' house and I kicked the ball in the air and caught it.
I kicked it again, but it went off the side of my foot and into the back yard of the crazy devil-woman.
I had no choice.
I was petrified with fear, but come on.
I climbed the stairs up the hillside to the small wooden porch and looked at the black smoke coming out of the chimney.
I almost fainted as I ignored the terror in my heart and I used the ornate brass door knock to announce my presence.
Joto joto.
Wait.
The nicest little lady with the coolest-looking red hair I had ever seen was soon serving me tea and sweet rice biscuits and showing me her pet cat and puppy who were inseparable, tumbling across the tatami mats at warp speed. Her nails were long and decorated with gold latticework.
Her face lit up as she showed me books of carefully-preserved family pictures kept in ornate silk binders.
I had so much fun meeting Asaka, learning about her and her family, and as I left this otherworldly out-of-the-way hermit's nest, she tossed me my football which had landed in her Infinity Garden.
She lofted the ball, "Roman Gabriel," she said.
"Bart Starr is better."
I'm sure my head was shaking as I descended the death stairs back to my house.
No one would believe it, but I had made a new friend that day.
Stay well.
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