Clean Up In Car Number Three

We'd been standing in line for the Wild Eagle ride at Dollywood last Wednesday for about 15 minutes, and it hadn't moved at all.

There were only maybe 100 people ahead of us, but the line was getting longer by the minute behind us, and the kids were getting impatient. "Lily, run up there and ask that lady what's going on," I said, pointing to an attendant standing upfront.

The way she looked at me, you would have thought I'd asked her to strip down to her underwear and do cartwheels in front of everyone while singing the national anthem and stuffing marshmallows in her ears at the same time.

Or something like that.

What I mean is, she wasn't about to do it. She had a total look of terror in her eyes as if asking the question would result in the lady decapitating her.

"No daddy, no daddy, PLEASE!!!!!!"

Shaking her head, nearly in tears, I know what she's actually afraid of.

Looking stupid.

"I can't ask that question!"

"What will she think?"

"What will the rest of the people in line think?"

"I must be the only person here who doesn't know!!!!!"

There was a time in my life where I worried a lot about what other people thought, and I'd be lying if I said it never crosses my mind.

It's natural, of course.

But here's the hot tip - ain't nobody thinking anything about you.

They're all too busy thinking about themselves, and that's the gospel.

It's human nature.

Think about the last time you went somewhere or did something. When you got there, did you think about what the other people were doing?

Hell no, you didn't.

You thought about your own self. How you looked in that sharp new suit or that fancy evening gown. How your performance stacked up to everyone else, or if the picture the photographer just took made you look fat.

You didn't think about how dumb the question was that someone just asked, you worried about whether or not the one you wanted to ask would sound stupid.

Whatever it was, chances are, you were thinking about yourself.

And yet, so many people get paralyzed with worry over what everybody else is thinking.

"OMG, I could never do that. What would people think?"

But you CAN do that, and chances are, the rest of the people will think, "OMG, I wish I could do something like that!"

Or maybe they won't think anything at all.

Either way, who cares?

Not doing things because you're worried about what someone else might think about them is about as silly as Lily's worry over asking the attendant why the line had stopped.

"Somebody puked on the last ride, it's going to take about 20 minutes to clean it up," she said, clearly not caring that Lily had asked.

Which is the way it usually works.

People don't think about what we're doing nearly as much as we'd like to believe they do.