Twisted, Demented and Warped

Losing the focus of business in the summer months, I thought I'd share some personal insight. Be careful though, what you see might frighten you.

My personality has been called many things: twisted, demented and warped are a few of the endearments I get from family members. Part of this is deserved because I tend to think half a click off sometimes.

One thing I recently admitted was that I hate being deceived. This is true for most of us, but what makes me twisted is that I get great satisfaction from deceiving others. I don't like maliciously deceiving others, but I love it when I can bluff my hand in pinochle, or lead someone on who is not gullible, and make buy my story long enough for me to drop the punchline and tease them. For example, in my previous life as a pastor, we had a bunch of people over to our house for dinner. The conversation turned to how old we all were when we married. I said we were 19 and 20 years old. I could feel the line go taught as they nibbled the bait as I saw the surprise that we were so young, so I followed that up with the statement by setting the hook and saying, "Well we had to get married so young because she was pregnant."

The look on their faces was priceless as they were all trying to figure out how they could escape this incredibly awkward situation of their pastor admitting this so candidly after they had so openly shown surprise that I was so young when I married. Twisted - maybe, but I still laugh when I think about the look on their face. So now you understand what I mean by deception.

I think I get this joy from the feeling of superior intellect that I get in that one situation. Somehow it makes me feel like I got the upper hand over them and I've established myself as the better trickster. As a result of this, I hate being deceived in the same way. Where certain people can't stand to loose, I can't stand to be deceived. I hate surprise birthday parties and other such things.

This all come to the surface again when I was recently reminded of a time when I was deceived for nine months by a previous employer. I spent yesterday afternoon and this morning analyzing events that occurred years ago and wondering where I missed the signs and how I could have been deceived for so long. To this day it still bugs me.

So there you have it. A look into the mind of a person with a twisted, demented and warped personality.