First Impression vs Last Impression

You always hear people talk about the importance of the First Impression. It's true that the first impression is important, and it's significantly more important when it's the only interaction you ever have, but recently I've come to doubt the importance of the first impression.

I've know many people that I didn't like at first, and whom I am now very good friends with. Likewise, I have had many people that I have interacted with wonderfully for years, and whom I can no longer get along with at all. Did this first impression really weigh as much as I thought it would? I don't think so. Maybe I'm just a weirdo, with a short memory, but I certainly think that the last interaction I had with someone weighs a lot more in my overall impression of that person.

To me, you are the weighted average of my feelings about all of our interactions, with the highest weight on the most recent. You can always earn a good impression, regardless of interaction in the past.

One of my many first impressions:

When I was 13 I moved to a new school. On the first day of school, in my first ever Spanish class, I made an awkward first impression. The teacher asked me, in front of the whole class, if I wanted to stay in the 8th grade class or move down to the 7th grade class. I kind of locked up and didn't know what to say. I didn't really want to move down to the 7th grade class, but I didn't know if I would be able to catch up to this class, so I just sat there with a goofy look on my face, unable to respond. This was my first impression on the entire class. Years later, some of my friends were talking about that moment, and I realized that for many of them, that was my first impression. It wasn't a good one, and it certainly isn't what they think of when they think of me. But there it was. Not very glorious, but of little consequence. :)

Another important first impression:

One day, I joined some friends on a trip to the river. On the way, we ran into another group of people with a common friend. We decided to float down the river together, after all: the more the better. For some reason there was one girl that really caught my eye. I had the cliche feeling where you have butterflies in your stomach, and you are totally afraid to interact. I played it pretty cool, I didn't lock up... I just had a series of those moments where you catch each other's eye in the right way, and you just have a quick moment where you are communicating a lot without saying much. Little did I know, she had mistaken me for the long term boyfriend of another person in the group I was with, and kept thinking to herself, "Eww, her boyfriend is a making eyes at me... what a perv". Long story short. I am going to marry her on January 11th, and if she loves me half as much as I feel like she does, or half as much as I love her, then the first impression was totally irrelevant.