I’m boring in person. I really don’t know how people don’t see that coming. I never tried to hide the fact that I was an accountant. I drive a silver minivan, which is a replacement for the other silver minivan that I drove for 10 years. Math was my favourite subject in school, and books were this only child’s best friends on a lot of lonely days. My friends and I cross-stitched and rented movies in high school. Yes, you are reading that correctly – cross-stitch as in “the craft done with thread”, not as in some exotic recreational drug. I was in a marching band for God’s sake. My screen name was nerdgirl, and then after I had children and someone beat me up and took my milk money snapped that name up first on twitter, I became nerdgirlmom. I took a wild leap there didn’t I?
I am boring.
I am awkward.
I am an introvert.
There were signs.
But I’m not sure if people choose to ignore the signs, or if they are misled by my writing. Or maybe they just think that stories about babbling to the clerk at the liquor store about how I absolutely did not sleep in my car with my toddler in the parking lot before coming in to buy wine, are indicative of someone who’s got their shit together.
I don’t know.
I leave notes in the grocery store after spilling noodles everywhere.
I work from home and convulse every time the phone rings.
I think the smartphone is the greatest invention ever because it allows me to retreat into its safe and warm embrace* at the first nervous butterflies that I feel in a crowd where I don’t know anyone.
*Okay maybe I love my iPhone a little too much.
Online I can be funny and warm – even outgoing at times. And I am those things in real life too when I get to know you, or even when I know some others around me. It’s when I have to meet people “IRL” that have only known me online, and think I’m hilarious that the trouble starts. At first I see the look of confusion as they double-check my badge to confirm they have the right name. There may even be a sneak at their iPhone to see if they are thinking of the right blog. Thought bubble floating overhead: “Yup – it’s the oversharing raccoon lady with the funny camping stories.” I see them thinking “She doesn’t seem like she would be reserved…there must be something wrong.” So they find a way to ask that.
“Are you okay? I never thought you would be this quiet,” which translates to “being mid-stroke, and busy contemplating walking into the shiny light, is the only passable excuse for being this uninteresting.”
And once the reality of my awkward self-consciousness sets in, the look of disappointment crosses their face. And then it kind of spirals, because instead of worrying that people won’t like me, I then know they don’t like me.
And I study my iPhone.
And tweet something funny.
From my trunk.