Archive for the 'Socially Awkward Barbie™' Category
On the daily
“Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.” ~Hermann Hesse
In third grade I told my teacher – Mr. Horan – that his pants were ‘tacky’ because I had confused ‘tacky’ with ‘khaki’ and apparently the two are not the same. Which reminds me of the day that he brought in an ultrasound picture of his son (Who I saw recently and I’ve suddenly aged like 14 years, which is probably the reason for the grays.) and I told him that it looked like a seashell, but how I came up with that is beyond me, but I was 7.
There was the time that I called my father a ‘son of a bitch’ in a joking fashion over a bottle of grape soda that he had hidden in the pantry. Though unlike Mr. Horan, el padre didn’t enjoy the words coming out of his 7 or 8 year old daughter’s mouth and decided to remove my lips from my face with his bare hands and since then I haven’t called anyone a son of a bitch.
Sometimes it’s a general spewing of things and even when I really think about what I want to say before actually saying it, I end up catatonic. Thus I rarely like to speak unless I’m fairly sure of what I’m saying before I say it. Which is why I tend to fare better at writing things out than actually speaking, but even then things don’t work very well, though actually it goes both ways given that I find the sound of my own voice akin to the noise that a fork makes when scraped along someone’s front teeth. So I end up sitting in rather durr-like fashion muttering to myself, possibly rocking back and forth and realizing that that didn’t go as well as I hoped.
Really though, I’m actually getting used to it. I plan to have lots of cats to talk to and maybe a dog. They won’t judge.
Posted by nopasanada @
11:22 am |
Exhibiting social graces
“Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.” ~Samuel Johnson
A few weeks ago, I received an email from a coworker who had recently started asking whether or not I was the Heather who wrote this blog called No Pasa Nada, because she had been reading it for about a year and it cracked her up. After I picked myself off the floor and stopped hyperventilating, I replied that yes that was me and that we would never speak of this again, and umm please love me? Even though for roughly 40 hours a week, I’m really not funny and actually at my most socially awkward, pleeaaaaase love me? K?
And ever since that moment, every time I see this person, I die a little inside trying to be funny and graceful and totally not making awkward jokes in the elevator that aren’t even funny. And then I smile and want to punch myself in the face with all the social awkwardness. In fact I’m pretty sure that I had a conversation that went something like “My this soda is so fizzy. Why is it so fizzy? Heh, ha, ha”. And now you want to punch me in the face as well, non?
It’s my personal resolution to myself to get a fucking grip and not be Socially Awkward Barbie™. To add further insult to injury (though writing this will hopefully alleviate the situation) I’ve totally become That girl, you know, THAT girl. Her. That girl who acts like a girl and cannot make it stop besides years of therapy and four years of university and vast knowledge of John Locke and Erasmus, I am still that girl. That girl who – gasp – can’t get a fucking grip and starts doing things and acting like a fucking psychotic idiot with a little irrational behavior on the side.
I’m driving to upstate in a few hours, where I will exhibit the aforementioned traits and more! I’m a tool. But please be my friend. Please? And send wine and fries. And if there is one thing to be thankful for, it’s that you aren’t me.
Edit to Add: Here’s a little view behind the curtain; I wrote this yesterday and was thinking about it this morning in the shower (feel free to stop and think about that then shudder). Then realized that this weekend I attended a friend’s birthday party and was totally not socially awkward, but instead nice and polite and normal and I HUGGED and laughed and consumed five (weak ass) vodka tonics. So maybe I’m not that bad and doomed to a life alone.
Posted by nopasanada @
10:04 am |
AlexanderGrahamBellaphobia
“I’d rather sit down and write a letter than call someone up. I hate the telephone.” ~Henry Miller
There’s something that I finally feel ok to tell you all. It’s semi serious, but I’ve been pretty good at keeping it hidden. And this is something that goes beyond the fact that I’m really not all that funny in person, but even worse than that: I’m afraid of the phone. Really afraid of the phone. So terrified of it that right now I must type or do something with my hands or I don’t know…deep knee bends…or something, because it’s just really hard. Let’s just say I just had one of the most awkward phone conversations ever (no, seriously) and then had to actually get up from my desk and take a walk. Because OH MY GOD, I had to call a STRANGER.
Oh and another secret: I obsess. Even when things don’t warrant obsessing, I’m obsessing because using the phone is such a big deal and a new fangled thing that I’ve apparently just discovered the proper way in which to use it. Thus an entire two paragraphs devoted to why I can’t handle being a competent person in this world. In fact, you know in The Net how Sandra Bullock did everything from the comfort of her home, including order pizza, and then she finally did leave the house and her world blew the fuck up?? Well that’s going to be me. I’m going to become a recluse and never leave my laptop and never actually talk to anyone on the phone, because apparently, I cannot.
I need to sit and rock a bit and get back to my happy place and remember a time, not that long ago, when I could use the fun and continue to be a functioning member of society. I don’t know what event triggered this panic to using the telephone, but oh my hell, I think it needs to stop.
Ok, all better.
Posted by nopasanada @
1:04 pm |
Because four years isn’t nearly enough time
Edit to Add: COUGH, COUGH. Ahem. Especially that fourth category, unless you are voting for Heather Anne, and then I guess that’s ok.
“The past is strapped to our backs. We do not have to see it; we can always feel it.” ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960
If there were a group called Over thinkers Anonymous (OA™); I would be its President with much fanfare and praise for those with the uncanny ability to think about things until they become obsessed in hopes for preparing for every single outcome possible. It’s a wonder that I didn’t do well in math given my propensity to figure out the probability of all things to come. Which brings me to why I’m suddenly obsessed with my ten year high school reunion. “But surely she jests” you scoff “For she’s a mere babe”. True, yes. My ten year high school reunion will be in 2011. But I feel like I must have adequate time to prepare for such a thing. I need something to be proud of and talk about despite how well I can hold my liquor.
Thus the reason for during those rare occasions home, I tend to shy away from any location where I might run into someone from high school, because then I might be forced to speak in coherent sentences with proper structuring. And God forbid, I pepper my speech with the ‘f’ word and my thoughts on Malbec, because I really have nothing else to say. Not necessarily because nothing is going on but because…well…I just don’t know what to say to these people, short of ‘durrrrr’, which is the primary reason for moving 400 plus miles away to a city where I have my own (relatively) happy life.
Fast forward to a random Sunday a few weeks ago, I was headed towards Dunkin Donuts (for coffee) after the gym. I’m a Dunkin Donuts whore from way back in the day, when I used to skip math class and head over to the closest DD in my minivan to smoke Marlboro lights and procure hazelnut coffee. A rebel, I tell you. So while headed to the Dunkin Donuts, looking disheveled (natch) I looked up and saw a familiar face. The face of someone with whom I had spent hours with in the library of Guilderland High School, commiserating over our disdain for Honors English and his disdain for Hillary Clinton and well, there was that time he came out of the closet. But there, he was, standing at the door of Dunkin Donuts in DC staring back at me. And I was in lycra and sporting a pseudo fro held up with a headband (Men of DC: Call me!) and so I had to endure small talk dressed as such, and laden not with spontaneous ‘fucks’ but with ‘durrrr…donuts…Albany’ (Men of DC: I’m a great conversationalist, to boot!)
Fast forward again to a random Monday night, Columbus Day in fact, during a quickie trip to the Urban Outfitters in Gallery Place. I was hot and sweaty in cashmere and oily because my t-zone hates me after 11 AM and frizzy hair because my hair hates me…oh, about 24/7. And it was during this quickie trip that the line was 30 people deep and there was one lone employee at the register. Up at the front was a girl purchasing 450 items including – and I’m loathe to write this – leggings. Green leggings. So I am now sweaty and annoyed and oily and frizzy. The lo and behold the girl at the front of the line whips around and stares right at me. My heart skips a beat with the recognition of another! Person! From! High school! And I quickly put my head down in deep prayer of hope that she won’t realize that it’s me, to which she yells out “HEATHER!” To which I reply with a meek “hey” with that added oompf of “oh holy mother fucker”. And I cringe and want to curl up in a ball and forget about my fabulous sweaters. But I stick it out through small talk and exchanging of cards and me whimpering inside.
You see the problem with all of this is that I wasn’t cool in high school and have never been cool. I am friends with cool people, but I? I am as cool as Velcro sneakers and aquanet, not that I was actually alive for the advent of aquanet, but you get my point. And so to see people from high school in my territory gives me hives and makes me want to die a little inside. Not because it was such torture and the teen angst, though I did listen to a lot of Greenday, it’s because my brain doesn’t compute. It doesn’t understand that high school was over June 24, 2001. And that a hell of a lot has happened since then and while I may still not be cool (Men of DC: Check out my crazy HTML coding skills!) or anything, I’m probably different and smarter and I chock full of vitriol and funny stories and a collection of Coach bags, but I still have that fear that ‘they’, whoever the infamous ‘they’ might be, will hate me and snicker.
So! I have four(ish) years to further analyze and obsess, invest in Murad skin care and teach my hair to lay the fuck down already. And adding a few more Coach bags to the collection couldn’t hurt.
Posted by nopasanada @
11:07 am |
