Fantasy Land and people are dicks!!

 When I was a kid, something happened that I still remember.

Maybe kid is the wrong word — I was in 9th grade, so not exactly small and cuddly but not really an adult either. Was just learning how to deal with the idea that the world is full of all sorts of people. Some could be nice, some could be massive dicks.

Case in point, we were at Fantasy Land — an amusement park in Mumbai. My first visit there -I was very excited.

There were 5 of us — 2 older aunts and me and my two male cousins

My two older cousins did not like the idea of babysitting me — they were a year and 2 years older and decided they would ditch me. 

And so, at one random ride, they decided to run off in two opposite directions, leaving me alone to find my way to the two older aunts.

Like I said, i was maybe 13 or 14? - not exactly helpless, but not in that great a state of mind either. My dad was pretty overprotective back then - I hadn't ever travelled by bus or train by myself, I absolutely sucked at directions and I really didn't know what to do next.

But more than that, I  remember feeling rejected. I wanted the approval of my older cousins, and here they were, running away and being massive dicks.

I am not built for anger. I knew even then that if I met them again, I would not be angry with them — maybe I should have been, but I was less about “Why the fuck would you do this to me and more about “how can i get people to like me?”

Time and time again I saw this pattern play out — There were kids in school that disliked me ; a kid in college who felt the same ; Thankfully, they were all in the minority — a stray example here and there. But instead of focusing on all the ones who liked me, I fretted about the ones who didn't.

All it did in those  frustrating teenage years was reinforce the  feeling that maybe the fault lay in me.

Maybe I did lack social skills and was awkward and annoying, of course, so it was possibly justifiable behavior on their part.

Or maybe I was being hyper-sensitive and everyone just had their own drama to deal with and I was reading too much into all of this.

Except, of course this wasn't really true. As I stated before, some kids were just massive dicks!  That's what I would tell the younger version of me if I had a chance to reassure him today.

It took a while for my personality to crystallize. Among the people I met along the way were those who just didn’t care how many feathers they ruffled as they went about doing what they thought was right. 

As well as those who expected that the world should be grateful for the privilege of knowing them.

And somewhere along the way, that started to rub off. I began to move from 

“ How can I get you to like me?” to 

“It’s your fucking loss if you don’t.” 

(Not saying that the latter is a healthier attitude than the former, but it worked for me)

It wasn’t an external facade I was putting up to heal bruised feelings — It was a genuine metamorphosis from someone who yearned to be liked, into someone who will gladly stay at home with a mountain of books instead of doing shots from someone's belly button at a bar.

A mountain may also have contributed to that thinking ( made of mud and stone, not of books) but it's a story for another day.

It took me time to find my groove. People who know me from back then have commented on how different I seem between then and now. Maybe I was always going to turn into a grumpy anti-social person when I was older. But I suspect the catalyst for this was my life adventures in Dubai. You may want to read more about that here

I forgot about this incident completely until one day at a pool party my 8yo came to me crying. “The other children don’t` want to play with me”, he said.

That moment gave me a flashback of this memory — me standing there as my cousins ran away, ditching me. In that moment, I knew exactly how he felt -Hurt. Rejected. Alone.

But how could I fix it?

Should I have distracted him? Made him forget about them ? Probably not for eventually he would remember and it would impact his confidence and self esteem.

Left him alone to figure it out? Couldn't do that either — he had asked for my help and I wanted to give it to him.

Talked about how wonderful he was and how they were fools to reject him and to not care about it? No, because it seems shallow and made up when it comes from his parents who always think the world of him.

I settled on trying to dissect what went wrong -Maybe he did something the other kids didn't like?? Maybe he was too aggressive while playing? Whatever it was, it could help the next time around. Maybe it might have helped me when I was younger if someone told me why I couldn't seem to fit in.

It wouldn't help with the here and now.

Eventually, I asked wifey. She walked up to the remaining kids and spoke to them to figure out what was wrong. It seemed like a misunderstanding. A couple of the girls wanted to play something else, a couple of the boys wanted to do what the girls were doing and suddenly my kid was the only one who wasn't part of the game. He wasn't being excluded — they just didn't tell him explicitly to join the new game. And with him displaying all the insecurities I had as a kid, he wouldn’t join unless someone actually invited him.

We facilitated his return to the group, and they all played happily after for another couple of hours.

I'm left with a feeling I can't quite name. Not quite satisfaction, not quite regret. It's the strange weight of watching someone you love navigate the same emotional landscape you once did, knowing you can light the path but not walk it for them.

The truth I wish someone had told me back then—the one I tried to give my son that day—is this: rejection is often not about you at all. More often than not, it's a misunderstanding, a miscommunication, a wavelength that not everyone is aligned on. Sometimes it's unintentional. Sometimes its malice.

 The hardest part isn't figuring out which one it is. It's learning that even when it is about you—when you did something wrong or said something awkward—that still doesn't make you fundamentally unworthy of connection.

The antidote to rejection isn't thicker skin or indifference (though I thought it was for a long time). 

It's clarity. It's asking the hard question instead of just feeling the hurt. It's having someone—a parent, a friend, anyone—willing to walk over and say, "Let me find out what's really happening here."

I still can't protect him from every sting, every misunderstanding, every kid who might be a little shit who deserves to be smacked But maybe I can teach him to do what I eventually learned to do myself: stop assuming the worst about himself, and start asking better questions about what's actually going on.

And if all else fails …by accepting that some people will just be massive dicks!!