Antonella Baccaro (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
cis it an antidote to bad impressions? I think no. But each of us has a way to archive those made and forget about them. Almost. Yes, because every now and then the memory resurfaces and makes us blush. My method so far has been to tell as many people about the embarrassment as possible, as if the burden of embarrassment could thus be distributed among all.
For years, for example, I went on to tell (and still do) a sensational gaffe that could have incinerated my high hopes of doing this job. I was young and on probation at a newspaper.
Now, being a girl in a predominantly male workplace is a bit of a double-edged sword. Or at least it was 30 years ago, when women were really few. In short, one had to be careful how one behaved to avoid misunderstandingsif you didn’t want them.
And here, one of the bosses on whom my future fate depended, fell into the editorial office for a farewell speech. I listen to it. I am silent. I nod. She goes away. A colleague from another editorial team, who teased me because he thought I had a soft spot for my bosshe asks me in an internal mail message how it went.
I answer by playing along and making a virginal appreciation on the boss’s eyes. It’s a moment. His finger presses “enter” and the message you understand by yourself where it is. It took my long haul of amateur acting to calm down when I got the answer: an immediate summons from the boss.
And it took all the chutzpah of my young years to pretend that it was someone else who took over my keyboard and sent that message. I was pardoned. And to this day I wonder what would have happened if I had admitted guilt.
Today to archive the bad impression I plan to do it by sleeping on it. The amazing thing is that it works. And I wonder if it’s age that, by shortening the short-term memory, helps us. Or if it’s the speed with which we live that clears our memory overnight.
What if all this, in the long run, prevents us from feeling that the limit has been exceeded? Is shame a feeling that we are progressively ceasing to feel? And at what price for everyone?
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