Don’t Hate Me

Image credit: Arleynd Soca

My 11-year-old neighbor once said something that has stuck with me: “I know you, Craig. You hate to have people not like you.”

The more I’ve thought about it, the more I realize that she’s totally right. I do hate to have people not like me. Like, seriously, it really bugs me. I mean, I’d like to think that I’m a reasonably likeable person. I’m a little quiet (a little too quiet), I try not to be rude or sarcastic (well, not overly sarcastic), and I’m pretty funny. (Did you hear the one about the—oh, wait, never mind.) So when people don’t like me, I get a little irritated. And sometimes, I go out of my way to get them to like me. Which, as far as I can tell, has never been successful.

Take for instance my 11-year-old neighbor. I feel like I’m pretty good friends with the whole family. I feel like the girls are the little sisters that I never had, and the boys, well, kind of remind me of my own brothers. But despite the fact that I’ve hung out at their house fairly frequently over the past couple of years, the 11-year-old still gives me a coolness rating of 50%—a failing grade.

Sometimes I’m envious of people who have the opposite attitude that I have. People who basically say, “Here’s who I am, take it or leave it.” People who don’t care whether other people like them or not about. I suspect, however, that at least some of these people actually do care what others think of them, but they don’t want anyone to know, so they pretend otherwise.

Along this same line of thinking, there is another attitude that I learned about from the movie Twilight. As far as I could tell, Edward actually went out of his way to be a jerk to Bella, to make her hate him, yet she ends up liking him, which is totally incomprehensible to me.

To be honest, I don’t think any of these attitudes are very good. It’s not good for me to spend time trying to get people to like me when I can spend time with people who already like me. As for the “take it or leave it” people, yeah, it’s all fine and good to be your own person, but sometimes you have to make changes for the people that you love and that love you, and that’s okay.

Oh, and remember girls: don’t fall for a guy who’s rude to you, stalks you, creeps into your bedroom and watches you sleep, and warns you that he may not be able to resist sucking your blood. Those are not good things.