It’s mid-September of my son’s freshman year of high school. I’m standing outside of the football stadium at the University of Northern Colorado on a Saturday morning. Our entire high school football program is there to watch the game between Northern Colorado and Houston Baptist University.
It’s the perfect day for a tailgate, with clear skies and lots of sunshine. Upper classmen’s parents towed grills to the parking lot, set up tables loaded with meat, buns, side dishes, chips, desserts, and drinks.
Our family’s new to the high school area, and we only know one other freshman family, and nobody from any of the other grades. Therefore, this a great way for me to meet the other football families, and not just from my kid’s team, but also the sophomore through senior classes, as well.
Now I’m not a total introvert, but probably a bit socially awkward when I first meet new people.
Not to mention, freshman parents are at the bottom of the social pecking order here. Nobody of significance knows me, and nobody really cares who I am. I’m too new to the scene to score more than a firm handshake or a “welcome to the program” slap on the shoulder. Basically, I’m lower than whale dung at the bottom of the ocean.
However, I do deem myself a good judge of character. Not that I was born with this skillset. I honed it over the years, and it grew into that inner voice, that quickly registers a thumb up or a thumb down on somebody.
Bottom line, that inner voice is never, ever wrong.
So I meet the other parents and forget their names within 9 seconds of introductions because this is an unheralded skillset that, apparently, I also possess. But I muster through it and keep going when I see Jeff, a dad whose son plays freshman football with my kid. We share a brief moment of cordial conversation before he works his way back through the crowd.
As my eyes follow him, I notice that he seems to know everybody there. And I don’t mean he’s better at remembering names. He’s shaking hands and hugging these people. He’s deep in conversations that are full of smiles and laughter. But then I see it. He hugs a senior’s mom and proceeds to give her a kiss on the cheek, which, amazingly, she reciprocates.
Jeff is kissing a senior varsity football player’s mom like they’re old family friends.
He’s new to school just like me. He’s part of the whale dung crowd, but he’s fraternizing with established families like he’s been part of the school since its doors first opened. It is precisely at this exact moment that my inner voice fires out a clear and concise message – kiss-ass. He’s schmoozing the crowd trying to get himself a little something extra.
A little over 5 years pass from witnessing this infamous kiss. It’s mid-November of my daughter’s high school senior year. I’m standing outside of the high school stadium watching her volleyball team load onto a bus. They’re heading to the Colorado State Championship Tournament. It is the last time most of these girls will ever play together.
As the girls board the bus, a janitor named Joe walks out of the stadium toward them. Joe’s a constant at the school, although he’s likely one of the least appreciated people on campus. You see him here day and night and you got to love his positivity. Today is no different. He claps his hands and pumps his fists in the air, shouting out a few encouraging words to the girls as they climb into the bus.
My daughter stands on the curb, close to her best friend, “G”. Their proximity to each other symbolizes the relationship. They’ve been virtually inseparable the past two years. When I’ve asked about the friendship, my daughter says, “G accepts me for who I am and I never have to fake it with her.”
Bottom line, the relationship is genuine and real, nothing phony, neither one using the other for some ulterior motive.
A cold breeze blows through the parking lot, while an ultimate irony also whirls inside my head. Jeff, the man my inner voice labeled a kiss-ass, is G’s dad and he’s standing a few feet from me. The girls are completely on the bus by now and I catch Jeff in the corner of my eye, but he’s not alone. He and Joe are embraced in a full-on hug. They release, Joe looks Jeff in the eye, thanks him, and tells him that he loves him. Jeff says, “I love you too, brother.”
Thankfully they do not kiss.
But kiss or no kiss, I now fully realize how big of an idiot I am. Over the past two years as our daughters built their friendship, I also got to know Jeff. He became a friend I could be real with. We share a comfortable honesty, nothing fake. He was never a kiss ass. He was just far better than me when it came to social interactions and I was just jealous of how easily he could do something that I struggled to do.
My inner voice that was never, ever wrong was wrong.
For the past two years I already knew this to be true, but specifically today the enormity of this character miscalculation hits home. It hits home, partly, because a kiss-ass doesn’t hug a janitor.
Let’s be real, a kiss-ass doesn’t even associate with a janitor. But more importantly, a kiss-ass never, ever hears, I love you from a janitor, and a kiss-ass most certainly never ever tells a janitor, “I love you too, bother”.