Images

People really don’t update their mental images of you very quickly. Was thinking about this related to an incident that happened after I’d been in the army a few years. I’d become literally three times as physically strong as when I joined up and looked totally different, but my pre-existing friends and acquaintances were the least likely to pick up on this.

Went over to a friend’s house in North Florida and his dad was working on his dump truck. His father was a professional dump truck driver. There was some part of the tail gate of the truck on the ground. It happened to be in front of me, and his dad mentioned that it needed to be moved, but said that he and my friend would do it because I couldn’t lift it.

At that time, I could deadlift 400+ pounds. I was far stronger than they both were, likely put together, though I had not been in high school at all 3+ years before.

Without a word, I picked up the tailgate part and moved it 20 feet without even a strain. It wasn’t even that heavy to me — probably weighed about 120 pounds.

The look on both of their faces was something you wish you had a camera for. Even after that, I’m not sure their image of me really got updated. Humans are strange.