I hate not being able to control things. Not that I’m a control freak or anything, but still…damn the uncontrolled.

One of the things that’s always a pain to control is other people’s perceptions of you. Sure, it’s your behavior, and you control what you do, but you can never control how people process that input, what buttons you push, if you remind them or someone or the countless other things that make people react back certain ways.

Example? Two of them.

One of my employees just quit because she’s transferring, and she didn’t tell either me because, for some reason, she was terrified of me. Don’t know why, don’t understand it. While I had to talk to her a couple times about actually figuring out her work schedule, but I never raised my voice, criticized or anything. But no, terrified. I suppose I should take some pleasure in placing fear in the hearts of the young and innocent, but it’s not really all it’s cracked up to be.

The other day I was in the supermarket at deli counter getting lunch when a guy who works at the college came in. I said hi to him and he kind of grunted at me, which makes sense, since he thinks I’m a pedophile. Lemme ’splain. About two years or so ago, I was doing an offsite sale for work, and this guy and his daughter come by. She was taking a class, and was there for some class or whatnot. We all chatted for a little bit, and then she went into the class, and I looked at him and said “She seems like a nice girl.” He looked at me, narrows his eyes and says “She’s *fourteen*” It took me a second to realize he thought I was hitting on her, and it’s been nothing but narrowed eyes ever since.

I suppose I shouldn’t let it get me down. My daughter thinks I’m “the man,” (as she keeps saying every time an ad for “Agent Cody Banks 2″ comes on) so that’s good enough. Even better, Toni will be her for a little over a week, so you probably won’t hearing that much from me.

Which, I suppose, some people would prefer.

Scourge of the seven seas, I remain…