Photo Credit: Slack12

I'll bet that somewhere out there you are a legend. You are known among members of an exclusive fan club you don't even know you have. Maybe you appeared mid-Captain Morgan pose in the background of someone's vacation photo. You might have been overheard absently singing a song you wrote yourself. It's possible that you were spotted in a storefront window checking the reflection of your flexed guns. It's much more likely, though, that you said something directly to your anonymous fans. You made some flip comment during an innocuous encounter, which became quoted again and again as lore. Like it or not, to someone somewhere you are "That" girl or guy.

I know a "That" guy because, by random chance, he met a founding member of his surreptitious fan club again. If he had just been "some" guy, these two ships would likely have passed in the night once more. But he was no mere somebody — He was "That" guy...

Their first encounter was on the side of the road. "That" guy was hard at work. He was a twenty-something British tourist turned recent Colorado resident on a Rocky Mountain high. He'd met a girl — his future wife — and had gotten himself a job. It was the kind of gig that made him an authority figure— He was the Director of Timing and Possible Outcome for other people's plans. But he was too lost in love and the American daydream to get drunk on that kind of power. His mind was elsewhere as he stood on the shoulder of a two-lane mountain road flicking his wrist to allow traffic to go "slow" or make it "stop." "That" guy was a construction flagger.

His soon-to-be fan club was in the lead car of one such traffic stop. Two young guys headed up the mountain for an afternoon at the slopes were growing impatient with the delay. The driver spotted a possible alternate route— a road to the right that, if passable, might lead them to freedom.

"Hey man," he called to get "That" guy's attention. "Can we take that road over there?"

That's when he delivered the line that would make him famous. In a thick British accent coupled with a laissez-faire tone, "That" guy shrugged his shoulders and told them: "I din't give a fick."

"I din't give a fick!" The line was adopted and repeated and quoted to others until it became part their inner circle's lore. Of course the irony is that if "That" guy had given a fick about their first impression of him, he would likely never met them as friends. He'd have said something courteous and been just another unrecognizable "some" guy when their paths crossed again. Instead he was tapped on the shoulder and introduced to his anonymous fans: "Hey, you're THE 'I Din't Give a Fick' Guy!" he was informed. For "That" guy, it turned out to be a good thing — his impersonators have become real friends.

So whether you happen to meet your fan club or not, know there's probably one out there — something random you said or did has been adopted and repeated. It's probably best if you don't know what or why. Just accept it. And remember: Even if you claim not to give a fick about first impressions, you know good and well how much they count.

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