This was indeed the most exciting thing that had happened to me that week. I cannot understate how nervous I got. My mom can attest. Anything unexpected or out of the ordinary will kick me into fight or flight and with the weeks and months cooped up comfortably inside my apartment, my threshold is very low. My heart actually started racing! Not because of the prospect of possibly having a secret admirer, but because I really didn’t know what to do. When you’re out and about in the world, you are often put into situations where you have to quickly assess, adapt, and make snap judgments. I know this may come as a shock, but living by yourself and never leaving your apartment doesn’t really give you many opportunities to do that. I am sorely out of practice.
Just recently, I had a similar sensation in a call with a couple friends. For the past several months, we have been recommending movies and shows to each other and doing a weekly video call to discuss our thoughts and opinions on the media we had seen. For the last two weeks, I’ve been getting anxious in the lead-up to the call. These chats are often the only substantive conversations I have with other people during the week, so I get insecure that I’m not going to be able to articulate myself! It’s pretty much D&A #5 coming to life. I don’t know why this is happening now. Seven months of isolation is a long time and maybe some cracks are beginning to show.
I wonder and worry about other mental muscles that I haven’t been exercising. Humor is a big one. I love riffing on a conversation, taking things to absurd lengths and making equally absurd comments. A lot of that came from practice! Not conscious practice, but you definitely pick up these sorts of things over hundreds of conversations. I remember back in middle and high school, I used humor as a tool to disarm, defuse, and befriend. It started as an almost tactical decision. If I wanted good social standing, I had to make people laugh. I experimented a lot: stealing jokes, formulating puns, but most importantly, listening to other people. Once in high school, I was able to put theory into practice. There was a student who made… let’s just say “insensitive” comments toward me. It didn’t feel great. He was the sporty-type and occupied the popular echelon of the social hierarchy. So what did I do? I started joking around with his friend, who was even more popular and a sort of ring leader for the other sporty-types. A genuine friendship formed and the insensitive comments from the initial party stopped coming my way.
I need to stress: I don’t do this anymore!! I’m not doing cost-benefit analyses on knock knock jokes and selling stock in social capital. I was at an age when small blunders feel apocalyptic and you spend the most time on things that matter the least. This is all to say that I enjoy people. I enjoy talking with people and I enjoy joking around with people. I just miss doing that and hope I can do more of that soon.
How did I get here? I don’t remember. God, I sound like a psychopath.