Tag: personalities

Red Flags or Intuition?

What personality trait in people raises a red flag with you?

I rolled my eyes when I saw this prompt. I have found that some people just give me an instant negative reaction or at least I get negative “vibes” soon after. I’m right about it more often than not; it’s one of my innate abilities.

Photography is not an innate ability though this seed pod is pretty.

I HAVE been wrong about those vibes a couple of times. There are a couple of good friends who rubbed me the wrong way at first, but grew on me.

Apache wonders if he’s one of those friends. I’m smiling now.

Upon additional thought about red flag traits, I managed to come up with one personality type that makes me want to avoid people. It’s folks who have no topics of conversation other than themselves and lack the social skills to recognize when they ought to give someone else a turn. It seems like every group I’ve been in, from La Leche League groups to spiritual groups to book clubs has one of these.

Be polite

I try to be patient with such folks. They may be lonely or they may have a disability that affects them. Sadly, I’ve seen more than one group break up or dwindle to just a few patient folks because of this.

I hope to all that is sacred that I’m not one of those people. I try to cut my stories short, but may fail. The thing is, I love to hear about other people’s lives; I just want everyone to get a turn.

Any other traits that are red flags? Probably being intentionally racist, sexist, or homophobic. Cruelty to animals. Stuff like that.

Drew points out that he is an animal and we’re not cruel to him.

I must tell you a trait I like in others, and that’s being kind to others. I appreciated it today when Tarrin’s husband, Teddy, helped Lee deal with a horse trailer gone bad. He found a nail in it but got it filled enough to get home. New tires are in our future.

I also truly appreciate the man in the pickup truck who followed us down Tarrin’s road, even into the parking lot of the new Milano gas station/truck stop. It turned out that when we heard a big clunk after hitting a tree branch (road not meant for RVs), it was our fancy television antenna being ripped off the roof. This kind man saw it, picked up the antenna, and brought it to us. Lee said he couldn’t tell the guy thank you enough.

We were darn late getting home.

See, there are many helpful people out there! They raise green flags with me!