I define myself as socially awkward.
This isn’t a well known fact, given I am a moderately successful professor who doesn’t rock the tweed and does have more than three friends. Still, I tend to find myself in these situations where I am left asking, Urkel-like, “Did I say that?” As a person whose career is shaped around words, you’d think I’d be more careful about the ones fleeing my lips. At least, you’d think I’d know what poor sentence choices look like.
Tonight I accused my wife of poisoning me (which she did do, btw). The accusation slid out casually in the midst of a conversation that, at the time, had little self-depricating or partner-depricating tones attached. Still, it is part of what she and I do sometimes. We tell stories on the other. This story came up over soup, when I asked my wife what was in the soup we were having at the chop and flip restaurant. That question drew a hint of curiosity from those with us, so I explained that I thought the soup might be the same soup I am allergic to. Then, for reasons I can only classify as social awkwardness, I felt compelled to explain that I’d had the bad soup once and gone delusional for the next two days, like a man possessed with Peyote. Then I continued, explaining that she would know full well what the soup was, because after the initial poisoning, she had occasion to serve the soup to me again and did so. I felt it was a cute story. Nobody else did. Me = awkard.
My awkwardness reads as a mixture of trying to hard and being afraid to simply be myself in all social settings. I am not afraid of what people think about me so much as I am afraid of devilishly misreading what they think about me. It is therefore my natural defense mechanism to try and make an early impact in the conversation to draw out a response that lets me know if I am reading them the way they mean to be read. Misreading = awkward. Forcing a situation where a read can be taken = epically awkward.
So, that’s me. I’m a creature of certainty and a man who is willing to work as hard as is possible to reach a desired outcome, so long as I recognize that I’m not misreading the possibilities of that outcome. Unfortunately, that translates poorly into the social space on occasion, and suddenly everyone knows your wife poisoned you.
There. I said it again…
Some Thoughts:
- That dull pounding at the back of your skull is apparently called a caffeine headache.
- It is harder to write with a cat perched on your laptop.
- 11:47 is almost too late for coffee but never too late for aspirin with happy sleepy drugs in it…