20
votes
What small thing made a big impact on you?
An offhand comment
A tiny detail
An incidental moment
Etc.
It wasn’t really a big deal, but, for whatever reason, it had a big impact on you.
What was it, and what was the impact? Tell us the story.
This is a little long-winded, so bear with me. I was in grade 2 or 3, so maybe 8-9 years old, when the class went on a day trip to a castle/museum. I grew up in Romania until I was about 15, so if anyone reading wants the exact location, look up Peles Castle. A popular trip for kids in school at least back then. Would have been the early 90s. I had very little pocket cash. Family was not wealthy. A classmate, Georgiana, was from a wealthier family, and I was friends with her. Many kids were using their pocket cash to buys random crap from the street vendors. I gave what little cash I had to a beggar, an old woman in black. Many kids were buying sunglasses - not sure why, I guess we thought they were cool. So I borrowed some cash from this girl. This is the "small thing" because I was getting a bit of cash when I got a good grade in school, which was pretty often. I told her I'll have the cash pretty soon.
Skip ahead a week or so, and I guess there were no assignments or grades in school, so no cash. She was getting annoyed. One day leaving school, the lady picking her up (relative? Sitter?) approached me and the lady picking me up from school (this was a common thing beucase parents were at work), and explained the situation. My "guardian" paid. It was very little money, again "SMALL THING". Think $5-10. Problem was, my parents didn't know of any of this - until now. So my guardian tells my parents because she needs to get reimbursed. BUSTED!
Ok, so, once again, maybe until now it's still a small thing. My parents maybe should have said "you should have let us know, it's only $5, doesn't matter, just let us know sooner next time and don't hide things like that from us." Nah. Instead, my dad is furious. He asks to see the sunglasses which I was hiding in a drawer. He crushes the cheap plastic sunglasses with his bare hands, and I forget what he actually says to me, but I am guessing some other "punishment" like no cartoons for a week or something. I don't know. I was shocked by his reaction. Felt disproportional, and left a mark. That's how this "small thing" turned into a big impact.
The impact was that the occurrence, the experience with my dad, his reaction to it, made me decide I need to be independent. I cannot depend on others and take chances. Can't borrow money if I don't have the money to pay up right away. Can't trust my dad to be on my side either. Can only trust myself and don't leave myself exposed or open to being caught. If I lie or hide something, do it perfectly and forever. Maybe it was a good lesson to learn early? Maybe it contributed to a poor relationship with my dad for many years to come? Hard to say. Either way, there you go, what to me was a small $5 non-problem turned to be an impactful experience.
I have an "overreacting dad" small-thing story, too.
I was probably 12 or 13 years old (or in that ballpark), and my parents were having a garage sale. I had a bunch of toys that both me and my younger brother had aged out of, and my parents let me set up my own "booth" in the garage where I would get to keep any of the money from selling those toys. They let me figure out fair prices for each of the toys and put stickers on them.
At some point the dad of some younger kids down the street asked me if I could go any lower on some of the toys--I think he wanted to buy some Fisher Price binoculars plus a couple other things, which would have come out to around $10 total based on sticker prices, and he said he would give me $5 for all of it together. I tried to haggle up but he wouldn't budge, so I said if I don't sell any of that stuff he can have it for that price at the end of the day. He said fine, and to bring it to his house later (he lived like 3 houses away from ours) if I change my mind.
Well the garage sale wrapped up that afternoon, and I still hadn't sold the stuff the guy wanted, so I threw it into my wagon and wheeled it over to his house and rang the doorbell. When he answered I said he could have the stuff for $5, and he said now his offer was only $4. I didn't think it was a huge deal--better to get some money instead of be stuck with these baby toys, so I took it.
Well, that night my dad mentioned he saw me wheel some stuff to the neighbor while they were putting away everything from the garage sale and asked what was up with that. I told him about all the stuff I sold for $4, and my dad went nuts, calling me a sucker, telling me I got ripped off, and I shouldn't be so naive. In hindsight he was probably more mad at the other dad than me, but man did that ever sting. I cried myself to sleep that night, vowing to never be taken advantage of ever again. So even to this day that "lesson" sticks with me, and I am extremely stubborn and hard to budge in situations where I think someone is trying to wheel-and-deal me, probably losing out on deals that I really should have taken, just to uphold my principles.
Thanks for sharing the story! As an adult I try not to judge my father too harshly as I know there is no manual for life. Some of the lessons, even though they were received in a harsh way, may have their benefit later. In your case, sure, maybe you lose out on some deals, but likely you gain more overall by sticking to your principles. For me, the lesson ended up influencing how I see loans and money I don’t actually have, which is likely a good thing. I’m very much opposed to taking out a loan unless absolutely necessary, but it can backfire as sometimes you can be strategic and use loans to your advantage as long as you know you can pay them off. All that aside, I do wish the delivery of said lessons was a little smoother. One comment here talks about the grandfather saying “you look nicer in more colorful clothing” rather than “you look awful in dark clothing”. A few words different, a milder tone, and the feedback can be more constructive and less negative on the relationship. I reconciled with my dad, but not until my late 30s, not fully anyway. That’s a long time of a relationship that could have been more positive. Of course it wasn’t just this incident, there were many others.
When I was younger and getting frustrated by something not working quite like I wanted, my dad offhandedly said "some mortal designed it, some other mortal built it, and you have the power to change how it works if you really care"
That mentality changed how I look at a lot of problems in my life. Yeah, he's right, most things are not that complicated when you break them open and start looking at the guts. It might not be worth it to make everything function like I expect, but it is almost always possible to change.
This applies to vehicles, house maintenance, toys, even random computer programs. Chop them up, take the parts you want, reassemble them as you need to solve your problem.
I used to think about these things all the time. How I could trace my circumstances back to one little event or decision. Sadly, I can't remember any of those from my early 20s. Either I was placing too much importance on the little things, or I'm just getting old. 🦞 "Why not both?" 🦞 Seems like my brain is too full of 15 year old memes to remember critical details of my life.
There is one thing that might apply: my high school buddy's wedding date. I've never been married, so forgive me if I'm not placing enough importance on the date, but then again, I wasn't the one getting married. I think it counts.
What's so important about this wedding date? Well, for starters, it was March 14, 2020. If you haven't blocked that period out of your mind, that's the day everything shut down in the US. I was living in Beijing at the time, and they had shut things down in late January. Like most people, I thought it was going to last a few weeks, maybe a month or two tops. It was actually important for me to be at the wedding, so I figured I'd skip the quarantine and hang out with my friends and family until the big day. I thought I was slick getting myself some extra vacation. Obviously, it didn't go the way I expected. Things got out of hand, and I wasnt able to make it back to the life I was building. I ended up meeting someone, moved in with her, got a job, and by the time I could go back to China, I had a new life. Had their wedding date been set for May or June, I wouldn't have left and the last six years would have been completely different for me.
I told a person I looked up to that I didn't like math, because I was indoctrinated into believing people shouldn't like math. He replied with the best advice I've ever gotten.
"You should learn to enjoy the things you're good at"
I posted a slightly similar question about the butterfly effect a while back, which may have some responses to this.
In high school I had started going “goth-lite” with dark baggy clothes and mildly obscene slogans on shirts etc. for maybe 9th and 10th grade.
One day, my grandpa, who would be up for the summer, was washing his car (which happened every other day) in his very high waisted white shorts and yellow polo, nonchalantly said “I think you look better in brighter colors” as I walked by.
I can’t really remember if it immediately hit me, or it happened over like a month, but I basically switched my whole persona before school started in the fall again. I wasn’t wearing my grandpas clothes or anything, but just normal jeans and positive slogans (or really, absence of graphics on tees). I really started to switch from “kid with some like friends” to “kid that sort of knows everybody and gets along with everybody”.
And I think about that moment probably every week. I had good grandparents and I’m sure I was just impacted by his perception of me. But I’m surprised at the degree of it.
I love questions like this, thank you for asking!
I've talked about it on Tildes many times before because it literally changed my life: how I started using ADHD meds.
I was already kinda aware that smoking pot gave me a lot more focus, but the tipping point came after another night of partying. Usually, every time I smoked weed, I never used my car. I slept where I took it and never tried to drive while high, like come on, that's obvious. Keep in mind, I also only smoked pot with my friends, so it was always a social event/party for me to smoke weed.
Well, I had been doing that (sleeping there) for 2 years at that point (only had a car in my late 20s), and one particular day, I really felt like I wanted to sleep at home. I knew the drive from my homie by heart, as I had gone there like 50 times in 3 years. So that late evening, I thought, fuck it, I'm good enough to drive, took my keys and drove home at midnight, still a little high from the evening.
I was LASER focused. Was aware of any small disturbances in the road, where every car around me was...all the way up to my home.
That following week, it really fucked me up. Why was I a better driver? Should I smoke weed everyday now? It took a little time connecting all the dots, but that was the starting point that made me research seriously about getting diagnosed for ADHD. Got the diagnosis 4 months later, on meds 3 months after that, and now, very happy with the results :)
It's crazy that an allegedly bad decision (DUI) actually made me realize that my body needed something for concentration.
I got a couple
When I was a teenager I was camping and while I was making some food with one of those camping boil in a bag things, an adult said to me "don't tear off the top all the way, because then you only have 1 piece of rubbish to take home instead of 2!"
And for some reason this really mediocre advice stuck with me and I find myself not tearing the tops the whole way off packets even in the house. And I stop myself like "why?".
Second was when I was really young. I remember my dad let me sit on his lap and play with the controls of a digger he had. He said "you can do what you want, just don't press that one" and being a young, little ass hole I immediately did the thing he said not to do. And he wasn't mad, he just looked so done and he quietly stepped out then went home. It made me feel so bad I made a point not to be like that as a kid (or adult).