I am not a people person. Big surprise, I know. Stay with me here, though. I don’t mean this in the typical connotation that this phrase normally has, i.e. that I despise human kind.
I love people. They’re great. I’m not going to go Dickensian evil villain and try to destroy human kind. Scouts' honor. I wasn’t a scout…but, oh well the sentiment stands.
What I mean is I don’t understand people. Everything that my species does baffles me. By now, most would be telling me, “Oh Ana stop that, you’re great with people!” Well, maybe not most, but some, a few, OK maybe just people that don’t know me.
Anyhoo. Seriously? No.
Having a conversation with me is like trying to explain to an octogenarian what Twitter is. Translation: I DO NOT COMPUTE. I have a terrible habit of having conversations in my own head. On the rare occasion that I am actually required to speak to something other than my own subconscious, let’s just say, things get ugly.
I say no when the answer is actually yes.
Specimen A: “Hey it’s really raining outside.”
Me: “Nope.” Specimen A: “What?”
Me: “I mean uhh…so about those Mariners…heh…heh…” I put reaffirming conversational grunts in the wrong places.
Specimen A: “So I went to class and I…”
Me: “Mmmmm.”
Specimen A: “Uhh so yeah anyway I went to class and -”
Me: “Mmmmm.”
Specimen A: “OK, seriously?”
Me: “Huh? What?”
I’ll begin to say something completely unrelated to the conversation right when the other participant is speaking, and it’s usually pretty strange.
Specimen A: “I was explaining to my professor about how jet propulsion systems could be drastically improved by -”
Me: “Do you ever have panic attacks on the elevator to the CUB when you realize that you don’t have anywhere to look that’s not someone’s face?”
Specimen A: “And my professor told me about this research grant that I….wait what??”
It’s probably pretty obvious that I’m never going to have a job as a talk show host. Sorry Oprah, you’ll have to find a different replacement. Maybe Cher. I swear Cher is going to live forever.
After a nuclear meltdown it’s just going to be Cher and the cockroaches singing “Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves” to the sounds of melting city. What was I saying? Oh right, my lack of skill in the verbal conversational battlefield.
I can have an entire conversation with someone and not remember a single thing about said interaction. It’s not that I don’t care, it’s that I can’t seem to focus on the person in front of me. Sometimes I think I have some sort of attention deficit disorder, but then I remember how utterly unexciting I am.
I make people sleepy. I’m not kidding, people fall asleep around me on a regular basis. Just call me Hypnos. To sum this all up: I don’t understand how I haven’t been pushed off a cliff by an enraged conversational participant yet.
Tallyho dear readers! Eat good cheese and be merry, but not Mary, unless your name is actually Mary, in that case, be Mary while being merry. Yeah…bye…
