I was once outgoing and charming. Here’s a picture of me before the pandemic:
Fabulously dressed, mingling, rattling off Churchill-caliber one liners with a martini in one hand and a long stem cigarette in the other.
This is me now:
In seven months I’ve gone from social butterfly to earthworm. And before I launch into the depth of how awkward I’ve become, I must disclose two things.
- Anyone reading this who went to high school with me is probably confused about when exactly I stopped being socially awkward.
- I do believe that social distancing during a pandemic is absolutely, 100% important. I’ve just gone a little weird.
- The class of 1993 is thinking, “Gone weird?”
- Ok, weirder. Further down the Yellow Brick Road of bizarre.
- “How much farther did you really have to go?” they ask.
- This is why I hated school.
It’s true that when I was young I had a hard time connecting with other kids. I felt like we were just interested in different things, me and all the other people. Every chat was a surface conversation, mostly about how everybody looked and who liked who. I didn’t like the Top 40 music that they liked. I both hated who everybody seemed to be and wanted to be who everybody seemed to be – good looking, funny, not a deep thinker, heterosexual, etc. I was so insecure and self conscious that I didn’t know what to say to anyone and everything I said seemed to come out wrong.
Then I got a couple of friends who were true kindred spirits and felt better about myself. Nothing is as important to a weird kid than someone to be weird with. High school ended, college bloomed before me, and I spent the next twenty years getting better at talking to people. Mostly I got better at not caring as much about what everyone thought and realizing that other people, even the ones who seemed winning and confident, were also sensitive and occasionally insecure humans. I chatted up people at parties. I introduced myself. After I came out, I asked women on dates. I got onstage and told stories. I went places where I didn’t feel welcome and I got by. One time in the French Quarter a guy asked me for money and I told him I didn’t have any cash but offered him a hug instead. He got the best bear hug I could muster. Through all of these moments, even times that I bombed onstage or didn’t know what to say next in a conversation, I was able to (for the most part) gracefully bow out of situations.
Then we all quarantined. My social skills dried up like an unwatered geranium.
About a week ago, Melanie introduced me to a coworker of hers. I waved hi and told him it was nice to meet him. He walked over to me with an outstretched hand. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t remember the last time I shook a stranger’s hand. I didn’t think we were doing that yet. So I waved hello more frantically and made eye contact with him hoping that my eyes would somehow show that I was smiling underneath my mask. For a painfully awkward moment he kept his paw out waiting for me to meet it, and I did not. I felt so bad about it, I tried to make up for it by asking him everything about himself and actively listened to an uncomfortable degree. When does active listening become uncomfortable? When someone whose mask is covering half of their face overcompensates for their hidden body language with an unblinking, unwavering stare.
I’ve never left someone hanging like that before. I am the person who once hugged a pan-handler in the French Quarter. What’s happened to me?
I’ve also had a hard time talking. Sometimes when I go to speak nothing comes out. I can’t think of anything to talk about, and when someone asks me how I am I become tired trying to answer the question. And I’m not even doing that bad! Not compared to a lot of other people. I have a job, I’m healthy, and the people I love who have gotten COVID have healed. However, I am a teacher, which….there are no words.
Yesterday I went kayaking with some friends and I became flustered whenever I had to talk or listen. Guys, this is not like me. I love talking AND listening! I love my friends! They are interesting, smart, intelligent women. But all I wanted to hear was the dip of my paddle in the bayou and the wind blowing through the cypress trees.
I want there to be a vaccine so that I can go back to storytelling shows, music festivals, and big family reunions. And shaking hands with new people. But I might have to go to a charm school first.