Jeri Caudill
Amanda Perry
ENG 11103-40
3 June 2013
The People We Meet When we meet new people, we always have an instant thought or reaction, even if we don’t show it. Looks mean a great deal to what we think about a person when we see them for the first time. This could include facial and body types, clothing style, and even a person’s shoes. Many people remain guarded in their actions and their speaking when they first meet someone. It can take a while for two people to be comfortable enough with each other to feel like they do not have to be self-consious anymore. Only after they have spent time with each other and have had many conversations do they begin to feel they know each other better. In these days of technology, with text messages and e-mails, sometimes it is easy to forget that a person’s body language and facial expressions tell us a lot about a person. We are all human and it is natural to have opinions and inward reactions to a new person. Sometimes just because a person is outwardly attractive to us, we believe we will like that person. This is not always the case. Many times we find that a pretty girl is conceited and selfish, or a plain and uninteresting looking boy is an amazing athlete, or gives of his time and/or money to the poor. Very talented and generous people are much more attractive, no matter what their features are or what kinds of clothes they wear. We must also think about other things besides appearance if we are trying not to judge someone on first time meetings. Consider, for instance, one girl who was attractive was also considered stuck up by her peers. She didn’t talk to many people at her school, and was not involved in any activities or sports. She wasn’t seen socially in the usual student hang outs. People thought because of her lack of engaging with others that she was conceited and a snob. The reality of the situation was that she was an extremely shy person who had had a very hard and complicated life. She actually had a certain amount of fear of what other people thought of her. She thought she would be found lacking in some fundamental way. She was lonely, and her shyness was counter-productive, but it was part of her and unavoidable. This shy but pretty girl had started out life with a wonderful family consisting of both of her natural parents and a sister that was three years older than her. Her mother was a wonderful and amazing woman who worked hard and always made sure the two girls had the best of everything, and seemed to have energy to spare taking care of the family and having a night-shift job at a local factory. Life was good and she went through the most of her early years happy and content. As she and her sister grew older they began to notice strange things about their formerly happy and approachable mother. She wasn’t keeping the house clean and her very personal hygiene was being neglected. She spent most of the days locked in her bedroom, as she had long since stopped going to work. Sometimes there was a strange smell coming from around the closed door. One day came that this shy girl will never forget. She and her sister watched as their father carried the lifeless body of their mother out to the car and whisked her away to the hospital. He came home many agonizing hours later and sat them down to explain. This girl learned that day that her mother was diagnosed with severe depression and drug addiction. She had