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Unintended Consequences 3

Every now and then, something happens that takes me by surprise and makes me chuckle to no end. That’s where this “unintended consequences” series of posts started, because I realized that there was a pattern to these particular instances. The last couple of times, a broken belt led to teasing about my closet habits and moving out of an apartment caused some clothing-related worries. In both cases, the outcome was entirely out of left field.

Interestingly, in the two previous occasions, the shenanigans were clothing-related. This, however, has nothing to do with clothes. In this instance, a simple picture was the cause of shenanigans. You see, I’ve worked at the same company for a while, so I’ve known some folks for many, many years. And it just so happened that one of them had a picture of me from all those years ago. Specifically, he had a picture of me from roughly 2007. I don’t know where he dug it up, or even why he kept it, but whatever the reason, he had it.

He also happens to work with some of the same folks I do, so he thought it might be amusing to have a “caption this” type contest. I wasn’t quite doing anything silly in the picture, but I was speaking to someone off-camera and had my attention directed there. It basically looked like I was pointing my mouth funny, so I could see why he figured it might be amusing. In fact, he asked me for permission to do this before he posted the photo on a group chat, so I knew it was coming before he did so.

I was fine with this plan, so I sat back and waited for the ribbing to begin. Instead, the first reaction to come in, almost immediately, was, “how in the heck does he look the same?!” I forget that I look young (though other people certainly don’t), so this took me by surprise. However, the first person to ask this question was clearly not alone, as the next few comments were all in that vein. Very quickly, the discussion turned from, “hey, let’s find a funny caption” to “dude, you have good genes.” There were also a few jokes about vampires and immortality, so the whole discussion took a hard-left from where I thought it was going to go.

All in all, I’ll take it. It sure beats the alternative of people straight up mocking me or thinking I look really, really old. I’ll just have to keep this in mind the next time someone tries to caption a photo of mine.

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