Two Saturdays ago one of my friends came into town, and we stupidly decided to meet at Carousel Mall, which is a huge mall in the area.

The place was packed as it was the Saturday after Black Friday. Normally if my wife and I find ourselves in a crowd of people we have a way of winding our way through the crowd with a series of twists and turns that smaller people would be amazed at. We almost never knock people out of our way nor run into people, and people coming towards us, well, we find a way around them. We'll usually defer to other people, which sometimes irks me because almost no one ever seems to defer to us.

However, on this day I just wasn't in the mood to do that. The crowds were bigger than normal, and my style isn't normally my friend's style. He's a little smaller than I am, so maybe that's the reason, but for one day I wanted to see what it was like not being quite so humble.

So, I walked straight ahead, not turning to the side to ease by people. I didn't quite knock people over; instead, I would just stop and make people go around me. I'm not a small guy so I could have muscled my way through, but even with my new boldness for the day I didn't want to hurt anyone. However, there were a couple of times when my instincts told me someone was getting ready to run into me from the side, and instead of flinching to minimize the impact on them I just let them hit me and bounce off.

I have to admit it was liberating to a major degree. It also felt kind of selfish. After all, I'm not a big guy because of anything I did specifically (well, kind of a misnomer but let me get on with it) with intention. I didn't move up the ladder into being a big guy; I just am. And even if I had moved up the ladder, I felt as though it didn't quite give me the right to, well, in my own way push people around.

At the same time, no one likes feeling taken advantage of. For instance, if you're in management and aren't one of those types who push people too much, instead treating employees like people, every once in awhile someone mistakes that for weakness and tries to take advantage of your good nature. Then you have to show them you're not a pushover in some fashion, and hopefully the lesson is learned and you won't have to do it again.

For one day I didn't feel like anyone was taking advantage of me in public. But the way I did it didn't quite fit my style. However, I did learn a couple of lessons that I'll share.

One, the more you flex your muscles, the more you can get away with.

Two, you don't have to flex your muscles to get a point across. Stopping and making people go around me here and there is fair because you're showing people they shouldn't just assume you're going to move for them without hurting them.

Three, you have to be true to yourself, but you can still learn some lessons that may help you feel better in the long run.

I don't see myself walking through the mall or wherever as I did on this day. But I do see myself stopping here and there when a mass of people are coming my way thinking I'm just going to move if there's no indication they're even thinking about it. After all, I'm hard to miss, and if I'm willing to move somewhat, they should be as well.

And that balance will be fair.