Hulu loves me. He told me so (yes, somehow, Hulu is a guy). After courting me post our break-up, he sent email after email, “I want you back”, “I’m thinking about you”, “I’d love to see you again, even if only for a trial period.”
When the final season of “The Bear” arrived on Hulu, I caved. To Adele I reported my renewal, not as a Bear fan desperate to see the fallout of Carmy’s meltdown but that Hulu could not survive without me. “Hulu wanted me back,” I said with no trace of sarcasm.
“Only you, only you would transform a freaking marketing email into a declaration of love.” She hasn’t let this go. In part to tease me, who tends to personify non-human things (my first car Fred the Pontiac, and my laptop, Magellan), but also because she sees it as a superpower of mine.
“It’s the way you see things. You think the world loves you. It does, but you operate with that assumption. It’s why you have already made some fast friends in Seattle. Some cool ones, no less. I want more of that.”
It’s not that what she is saying is necessarily true, but she has made me own the fact that I have developed, over the years, a certain confidence. People seem surprised when I tell them I was a shy kid; I couldn’t look people in the eye when I talked to them. My dad made me wait tables to get over this. Teaching also forced me out of my shell. I had to fight a lot of nerves before each class and lecture.
So while we don’t always have the skills we wish to possess, I’m a walking example that immersion, one experience at a time, grows us.