First Impressions

One of my students was once telling me of the preparations he was making for his first job interview. He had bought himself a new suit, shirt, tie and shoes. "First impressions" he assured me "are the most important". They may well be most important but they are also usually wrong. Last year I organised a fund raising event for a certain charity. It was a whisky tasting evening and apart from sampling some of Scotland's finest, people were entertained by two pipers, a man and a woman in full highland regalia. When they arrived at the hall, I introduced myself as the Rabbi who had made the booking. The woman piper looked at me and asked if I remembered her. I looked and looked but I just couldn't place her. Seeing my confusion she reminded me that I had recently spent a week speaking and teaching at a certain well known Grammar school. That's where we had met. She is the head of the Classics department. You could have knocked me down with a feather. Later on when I thanked the pipers I told the hundred and fifty guests who the piper was. They were absolutely amazed.

We feel comfortable when people fit nicely into categories and types and astonished when they don't. Last week I travelled to London to be the guest speaker over the Jewish Sabbath in a certain Synagogue. I was taken to sit beside the Rabbi at the front and made very welcome. Men and women sit separately in Synagogue and when my wife arrived with our two little daughters she couldn't find a seat. No one knew who she was and eventually she located the last empty chair and started to sit down. The woman who was sitting in the next seat gave her a very unfriendly look and told her in decidedly icy tones that the seat belonged to someone else who sometimes comes. My wife felt about as welcome as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq. After the service we moved into the hall for the dinner at which I was to speak and my wife sat with me at the top table. By chance the lady she had had the misfortune to sit beside, now had the misfortune to be sitting opposite her. Instead of looking at a stranger to whom she had been less than friendly, she was now looking at one of the guests of honour. She seemed a bit uncomfortable. So whether it's Highland pipers metamorphosising into classics teachers or strangers becoming guests of honour it really is a mistake to judge people by first impressions. People.......all of us, deserve to be judged by what we are, not by what we appear.