Preface To Shyness: Two Stories About How Shy I Am

For the purposes of these tales, I suppose I am conflating shyness with introversion.  That may be wrong.  According to this article, "Shyness & introversion are not the same thing. Shyness is the fear of negative judgment, & introversion is a preference for quiet, minimally stimulating environments."  I don't know if I entirely agree - in my life those two things have coincided.

For some reason, I was a very shy kid, but only around strangers.  If I knew someone, I would warm up & even be ridiculously loud.  But certain things terrified me, & one of them in particular was cold-calling someone on the phone.  Especially to do something like order pizza.

My mother worked nights often at a convenience store, & although we were ostensibly watched by my younger sister (six years older than I) (she was still living at home), she was often out with her friends, underage drinking & getting high & what-not.  My mother didn't ask her to cook for us, & in fact we would be often required to fend for ourselves, either to walk to a nearby grocery store (a Minyard's) to get something in a can, or, when a Domino's opened nearby, to call for pizza delivery.

Most kids I would imagine would love to call to order pizza - I'm certain it's something we play-acted doing when we were younger.  But my little brother & I would fight over calling for a pizza - & the loser of the fight would have to call.

At some point, I got exhausted by always having to struggle to get these simple tasks done, so I eventually just learned to be the mouthpiece for the two of us.  I went to the counter, I called whomever, I asked the person who worked wherever where things were.  In a sense, that's what's made me less introverted & what's kept my little brother more or less the same quiet person he was when he was a kid.

But I do remember the first time I had to stand up & speak at a meeting at KVRX.  My legs started to tremble.  I don't really think I've gotten much better.

The second story does more involve introversion than shyness, although I do think my shyness is involved.  I dated for a time a woman who was very outgoing, who loved dinner parties & that sort of thing.  She had other introverts as friends so said she understood when I didn't want to tag along, but she assumed that I also had zero social skills.  When I finally joined her at some gathering, she was shocked to see me be friendly & chatty & otherwise the opposite of miserable.  I told her, "Don't mistake being anti-social because I prefer to be alone with being anti-social because I'm socially awkward."

But thinking about it, my earlier experiences with my little brother - just being so tired about every human interaction needing a fight to precipitate it - & frankly, when I bested him, my little brother was always so bad at those interactions because he was really quite shy - it made me develop some kinds of social skills he probably never did.  As far as I know.

The most obvious time my shyness is in view these days is when I am walking my dogs by myself.  I listen to music & desperate hope I don't have to talk to other dog walkers or strangers or people who want to meet my dogs.  I have what I imagine is an obviously fake smile I give to people which I hope warns them away.  My dogs, however, aren't shy at all.  Assholes.