The stories we make up

I was sharing ideas from my last blog with a group of friends last weekend. They were in agreement about how little we know of other's stories but one of them also nodded and said, "Yeah, and we make up so many stories about others in our heads too."

The thought struck me. He was dead right. We don't know what's going on in other people's heads until they tell us. And until then, we have only our suppositions to go on. But boy, can we go wild with those suppositions!

Case in point. A number of years ago I had returned to university to do a Bachelor of Science. My daughter was a toddler, and so I had her in one of the uni's three creches. It was a thriving, multicultural place with lots of people coming and going as they dealt with their weird, student schedules.

I recall my social radar tuning into another mother amidst the myriad of parents. Why did I notice her? Because she kept staring at me, hard.

I remember thinking, "Why doesn't that woman like me? What's her problem with me? What did I ever do to her to make her stare at me so?"

In my mind, her stares became glares. I automatically imbued them with hostile intent. I began to avoid her as much as I could, thinking I was wisely steering clear of some sort of altercation.

Then one day, I was walking down from the university to the ferry building. (I lived in Devonport, Auckland, New Zealand at the time and the best way to get home was to take the ferry across the harbour.)

It had just started to rain, and I'd been caught out without a jacket or an umbrella. (My daughter was fine, safely encased in one of those plastic covers that came with the mountain-buggy type prams that were popular in the early 'nauties.')

I was hurrying down the hill trying unsuccessfully to avoid a drenching when all of a sudden a car pulled up alongside me.

"Would you like a lift?" someone called from inside the vehicle.

I turned to see who was offering me such timely kindness and discovered it was the starer. She leaned towards me from the driver's seat, smiling.

Tentatively, I accepted. I mean people who wanted to get in a fight with you didn't tend to offer you rides, right?

Turns out she'd been eyeing me up as a potential pal for ages. That car ride led to a long and beautiful friendship that's still a huge part of my life to this day.

How wrong the story in my head had been!

I think a lot of people are guilty of unsolicited story creation. I used to have a partner who didn't bother asking what others thought in any given situation because he thought he already knew. Suffice it to say it led to several rather serious misunderstandings!

As women, when we first meet a new guy the temptation can be to romanticise him, make up this huge story about him in our heads. He takes us to a trendy restaurant, so he must be doing alright for himself. He works in medical equipment sales so possibly he's the most altruistic, kind person on the face of the planet. He says he likes the film 'The Notebook' so clearly he's the most romantic man we've encountered for ages. He calls us sweetheart and says he finds us adorable. Well, obviously he's one step away from professing his undying love. There's a thriving industry out there built around denuding lonely people, especially older women, of their money based on fantasies they've created in their own heads. The perpetrators, just help them along by delivering a few well-crafted prompts.

All of a sudden, a woman in Melbourne is wiring five thousand dollars to a bank account in the Cayman Islands because the love of her life, who friended her on Facebook a month ago needs medical attention for his ailing mother or a ticket to come and see her.

Stories can be uplifting, enlivening, entertaining and fun. They can pull at our heartstrings and get us all hot and bothered. But the ones we tell ourselves about others are best served with lashings of well corroborated fact.