On Being Important

When I was in preschool I my teacher made a photo block for my mom - it sat for years in her headboard, just 6 photos of me at school that year glued to a chunk of wood. Give my teacher a break, it was before pinterest. One of the photos is of me wearing a construction paper hat standing outside at "school" wearing a VIP badge. Maybe it's just the photo, but I swear I remember that day. There was a song

I'm a VIP in my family, I'm a VIP you seeee!

A very important person! A very important person!

A very important person that's meeeeeee.

Deep and meaningful lyrics right? 

Anyway, now that I'm a mom, I realize that VIP probably meant that my mom had to send me with treats for the class that week. Perhaps make a poster about how adorable I am. I don't know. I just remember the paper badge necklace, the crazy hat, and of course the song. 

So you see I was very young when I started feeling important. I suppose I never stopped. Pride is one (of many) of my character flaws. 

One thing I love about my job is that some days it feeds that ego of mine. Some days I come home feeling useless and incapable, but more often than not I come home feeling important and cool and very very grown up. Yesterday was an important grown up day. 

I'd been working on financial projects in preparation for a client meeting. Clients and projections make me feel important. 

I also spent some time editing the website content which really translates to 'finding other people's errors' and if discovering errors doesn't make you feel important I don't know what does. After editing content, I spent some time talking vision, making decisions, and bossing our Site Design Guy around. Site Design Guy is awesome, and is definitely capable of standing his ground and telling me when I'm wrong (which is obviously never). Discussions with people who tell me I'm wrong and then let me argue my point make me feel important. Bossing people around makes me feel even more important. 

After all of that I contacted some potential donors and set up some presentation appointments for interns (more people for me to boss around!). Interns make me feeling important. 

So you see, I was clearly walking around with a head the size of a small country what with all my high powered business importance of bossing people around and preparing for clients. 

It was the end of the day and I gathered my things (important people have things to gather - they take things to and from work every day in an important briefcase or bag, and though I haven't figured out what they do with those things when they go home, I am a willing participant in the habit of taking things places.) and started to head out the door. 

But Site Design Guy was leaving at the same time and I didn't want to walk out "with" him, so instead I stalled all awkwardly hiding by the bathroom down the hall before heading down the stairs. He must have stalled too, then heard me coming because he held the door for me and we chatted a bit while we walked all 6 of the steps to our cars. Which were parked right next to each other. 

His is a space age, sleek, clean car which has probably never doubled as a diaper changing station or housed a car seat. He walked "within range" and it lit up and beeped recognizing it's owner. Because space age cars owned by cool people who don't even have keys KNOW things. It probably greeted him in a computer robot voice when he got in. "Hello Site Design Guy, how was your day at work? Can I get you a cup of coffee or call an important client for you? Or would you just like to relax and listen to smooth jazz while I drive us home using my impressive robot brain?" It must have happened. I know it.

Me? I hauled all my stuff (which suddenly seemed less like an important briefcase and more like a diaper bag) and jangled the million keys on my ring to unlock my minivan. I climbed in, and the radio started blaring Raffi. Because apparently I hadn't noticed during my 30 minute drive to work after dropping off my kids that I was still rockin' the kid tunes. 

I'm going to pretend he didn't notice the loose fries that fell out when I opened the door or hear Raffi singing about baby beluga and that he still thinks I'm a very impressive high powered business woman who just happened to trade her own space age robot car for something else just to blend in for the day. 

Because important people weary of being important, driving robot cars, and eating at tables instead of in their vehicles. They just want to blend in. Princess Jasmine told me so.