promises

Generally, I don't make promises. It's not that I don't believe in promises or have not made any promises in my life (in fact I've made some huge promises), but I tend to not make them unless I'm 100% sure I can follow through. I don't know whether this stems from people breaking their promises to me or because I hate letting others down, but I take promises very seriously. I remember when I was working with kids and would tell them something like "maybe we'll play some frisbee later" and they would retort, "d'you promise?" "Sure" I'd say. I very quickly learned not to make promises that I would grant even those small requests because if there's one thing to know about school-aged children, they have memories like elephants! Inevitably, something would come and I would not be able to play frisbee with the kid and, man, would I hear about it! "Matt, you promised you'd play frisbee with me and didn't!" More often than not, this would be followed by tears/sobbing. That taught me.

As I said before, I don't take this promises thing lightly and feel a real sense of guilt and shame if I promise something and then forget or am unable to deliver on it. There are still certain people who will ask me "promise?" after I say I'll try to do something for them or be somewhere (you know who you are!), but they inevitably get a negative from me. I've been accused numerous times of being noncommittal and flaky because of this, though I think anyone who knows me well would say that those aren't two adjectives that fit me (short-tempered and annoying work far better!). I just think that if I'm going to actually promise something I want to do it, not just say it, rather than getting in the habit of saying "yeah, I promise" to get someone off my back--I just don't want to be that kind of person, as a friend and later on if I become a father.