Playing Executive

This morning was the monthly Executive Committee meeting, so instead of sweatpants like I usually wear on Fridays, I had to dig out some dress pants and heals. The meeting was at the Board President's Downtown office, where he is the Vice President of a banking corporation. He works in a fancy office, with people in suits who say, "good morning sir" when they pass him. We met in a boardroom that was bigger than my house, with a shiny table I was afraid to touch and leather chairs that probably each cost more than my car. I got several odd looks from employees that were my age when I said, "hi J. How are you this morning?" Apparently they're not on a first name/ friendly small talk basis with him.

The meeting included me and five men in business suits. All of them are old enough to be my father or even grandfather, all of them work in banking, and all of them have more spare change in their back pocket than is in my entire bank account. Small talk before the meeting was all about the recent happenings on Wall Street, which could have literally been a conversation in Swahili.

"Blah blah blah blah blah blah money" (me- oh, I know that word!) "blah blah blah bank" (me- oh, I've been to one of those!) Blah blah blah blah..." I smiled and nodded and agreed and did my best to not look as clueless as I felt. I expected that at any moment they would all turn to me and say, "okay hun, the big people are going to meet to talk about grown up stuff, why don't you run along and play with the other kids for a while."

But they never did. Instead, they pulled out their files and papers, and I did the same, and we talked about budget and projected income and other important stuff, and even though I still see myself as an awkward 15 year old, somehow, when I opened my mouth, well thought out, clear, intelligent conversation came out. I am always a little bit surprised and after the fact, wonder how it happened, but none of them seem to notice my shock, and instead ask me questions and responded to my comments. And at the end of the meeting, instead of patting me on my head and handing me a quarter (which is also what I expected), they shook my hand and told me they were impressed by my hard work and optimistic about the future and happy to have me on board. And I smiled confidently and told them that all is well or something and then went back to daydreaming about reality tv and ice cream.

I don't know when all of this happened. I don't know when I went from being a little kid playing dress up to being an adult. I feel very much like I am playing Executive Director and it absolutely blows my mind when I sit through a meeting like that and realize that they're all buying it and I've got them convinced. Maybe I need to be more confident, but their money and power and experience and age are intimidating to me. If I really thought about it, I bet I know at least 100 camp songs. You want to have a jello fight or set up an Olympic competition? I'm an expert. Unfortunately those qualifications didn't make me feel like I was one of the boys this morning. And so when they defer to me on things or tell me I am the person to take the lead, to make the call or that I should just go ahead and run with my ideas, I find myself fighting the urge to look behind myself to make sure they are really talking to me.

The men I met with this morning are great guys who couldn't be more encouraging or kind, and I think that I will learn a lot from them. And maybe, after a while, meeting with them won't feel so weird and being an adult will come naturally. Until then, I will continue to pretend to be confident while I silently remind myself to "be cool, you belong, do everything the adults do and just blend in."