Wisdom Fail

Wow, taking a digital picture from my Samsung widescreen TV actually looks... pretty darn decent. Joe and I were watching our copy of Inglorious Bastards tonight and I was holding my camera and he was like, "Hey, take a random picture of the TV screen." So I did. And I guess so long as you don't blow it up too much it makes a snazzy if a tad hazy cheapo screen capturing device. Good to know! Oui oui, très ghetto of moi!

Ah, Memorial Day. Sweet, strange memories of the annual barbecues I used to have at my old apartment in Ghent back in the 90's. So many people cramped into my tiny old place, with a gaggle of them watching Desperate Living in Goofy Steve's room and another gaggle watching Supervixens in my room. Grilling out on my fire escape. And the overall goofiness of drunks and the wacky things they do, and me trying to control the situations as they arose. Drunken Lou almost dropping a girl off the balcony until I grabbed hold of her ankle and reeled her back in. Drunken Gordon setting off fireworks in his mouth, and drunken Monrovia shooting a gun at the Farm Fresh sign across the street, until I wrestled the contraband out of both their hands. And drunken Ted putting a slice of American cheese stuck full of safety pins and thumb tacks in his mouth, and me screaming like a nellie with my hand down his throat trying to remove the prickly half chewed wad before he choked himself. Skeery times! No wonder I haven't had a Memorial Day party at this house since I moved here three years ago. I'm getting too old to be pulling cheese out of somebody's mouth.

Lately I have been coming to terms, more and more, about what I perceive to be my slightly autistic issues with socialization. Does that mean that I am autistic? Hmm, maybe not. My brother is autistic, and maybe I have a hint of it in my genetic coding as well. But I've never been one to chalk up my issues to conditions that would make me feel as if I can have no control over myself, whether I have those conditions or not.

But these days I'm beginning to see myself the way somebody else might potentially see me, and I could see how they might perceive me as being difficult to communicate with. My former boss at the store was probably the only person in my life who was honest enough to take me aside and tell me, "Melissa, it's just so hard to know you, because you are so quiet and you never talk to anybody and I can never tell exactly what you're thinking." And see, I was trying very hard to be quiet and not stand around chit-chatting and instead busy myself with work to prove my worth. But it turns out that standing around and chit-chatting, to a degree, is an unspoken acceptable means of climbing the corporate as well as the social ladder in workplace situations. And I'm beginning to realize that I am thoroughly inept at playing that game.

Yesterday while I was eating lunch at my desk, reading a magazine, my brand new assistant manager (third day on the job) came bounding into the office, iPod plugged into his ears, and rapping at the top of his lungs and dancing around -- but done in a way where I was... sort of perceiving him to want my attention in some way. Wouldn't one have that reaction when a 50-something year old man starts dancing in a circle next your desk, rapping thunderously to the music that only he can hear? But maybe I was wrong about this, as I usually am about these things. And fearing that I might be wrong, I regarded him for a second before returning to my magazine article and salad. Then I sensed my boss looking right at me, and then suddenly, silently leaving the office. A few minutes later he returned, apologizing for singing while I was reading, saying things like, "Sometimes, y'know, I just like to feel the rhythm in me and.. y'know, just let it all out?" Again, done in a way where in hindsight I'm thinking that he wanted me to start a conversation with him, or comment on him dancing and around and singing, the way a little kid wants your attention. And I realized, soon after, that once again I probably didn't "play the game" the way I was expected to. That I didn't interact the way that was expected of me. Especially to someone who has the ability to promote me from within, and on is first week getting to know me, too.

When I'm with close friends, like Mike or S., I don't have to try. But making friends is difficult for me, because I lack the knowledge of those essential social protocols. I think the few friends I have ended up becoming my friends in spite of my lack of social protocols. And over the years, it has forced me to shy away from people, even though I want nothing more than to get to know them better. I got burned a lot in the past for being too friendly, and now I might actually be becoming even more ostracized by showing more social restraint. I'm not learning any middle ground here. A part of me would rather not communicate than flub things up worse. And I long to socialize. I love being active and social and learning about people and connecting. But I think my lack of knowing how is what's turned me into the house hermit that I've become over the last several years, finding more solace in my books and movies and records than trying to reign in my nervous "chatter" in social situations. It's both a pleasure and a torment attending my Sunday brunches, even with people I've know for years, because I love the socializing but I always come away smacking myself in the forehead over the stupid things I said or how I behaved, or whatever it was that makes the women at the table look at me sideways, like the fat, unladylike Philistine who shows up at every breakfast in her band T-shirts and brays like an ass over every stupid This Is Spinal Tap joke.

Jeepers! How did this twisted internal monologue get started, anyway? I was just nattering on about Memorial Day and shit. Oh well, Happy Memorial Day, everyone! My old roommate Goofy Steve is stationed in Baghdad right now, and my CIA cousin is in Afghanistan. Holy smokes, thems some other internal monologuings right there for another time.