How Has Someone Unexpectedly Changed My Life?

Louis Pavlakos

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How Has Someone Unexpectedly Changed My Life?

Three years ago, I started working at a Target near my house. I was placed in the electronics department shortly after I was hired. As I was meeting my new coworkers, one of them began asking me where I lived. I told him that I lived just across the highway and he stopped me and asked if my neighborhood was called “Bergerac III”. I did, in fact, live there and he started laughing because he lived right up the street from me. As time passed, we started hanging out more and more with each other. My life began to change when he introduced me to his friends and led me to understanding brotherhood, improving my social skills, and participating in larger group activities.

Prior to that, I never really had a large circle of friends with whom I spent my time. Most of the people I was friends with were just individuals and not part of a group. By changing the people I hung out with, it altered the way I perceived friendship. It introduced a sense of brotherhood into my life. The guys slowly started trusting me and, after a while, they accepted me into their group as one of their own. We were comparable to a wolf pack during that first summer spent together. We were always with each other and never delved into big plans if we weren’t all present. Through hanging out with them, I learned how to be patient with people, how to listen to them, and most importantly, how to be a good friend through thick and thin. Despite having no blood relation to any of these guys, we all considered each other to be brothers.

Most activities we did together involved going out and being social. I never was the kind of person who particularly enjoyed that, but I figured it was time to try new things. When we would attend parties, my friends would be encouraging to go talk to new people and socialize as opposed to just laying low in the background and letting the night drift away. Taking the “Fake It Till You Make It” idiom to heart, I had to start exuding confidence like never before. I started becoming more active in group conversations, making jokes, and keeping my head held high to force myself to be more sociable than I ever was. This didn’t happen overnight however. I picked up on certain things from my friends at first based on tips they had given me as well observing them in similar situations from a distance. I took what they knew and adapted them to my personality.

Beyond going out to parties and meeting people, we often did things that were more out of the ordinary than the usual. We took drives to Ottawa, went to different events happening in Montreal, and even booking some cottages to stay on weekends when we all had time off. These were things I never got to do with individual friends because it was a big commitment to make with just two people. As a group, it felt more like an adventure which was new to me.

Since then, the progress I’ve made on my social skills has been exponential. My friends and family have both noticed the change in my attitude and were quite happy to see it as well. That small coincidence of being placed in the electronics department at Target with a then unknown neighbor led to the biggest change in my life.