The other day, someone told me, “I can’t imagine you ever being awkward with people.” And I thought, oh God, yes, say it to me again, again, put it in my veins. Tell me I’m a natural performer. There are no sweeter words.
Because of course the absolute opposite is true. I’ve tried so hard to learn how to connect with people. It’s all I ever wanted, for so long. I can still remember the pain of my youth, when the brightness of my experience felt like a wasted gift, a rude excess, without anyone to meet me in it. And I remember how many years of deliberate practice were required to secure routine pleasant interactions with my fellow human beings. I was born without social awareness, and I installed mine bit by bit.
Looking back, it’s clear to me now that my increase in social skill wasn’t linear, like building a little more strength with every trip to the gym. Instead, I had six different paradigms of connection — six entirely different ideas of how to approach people — that I moved through on the way to my current method.
1: Connecting with people is about being a dazzling person
As a child, I was abrasive and abrupt, excitable and sensitive. Interacting with me was exhausting. And my position in the hierarchy reflected it. I was probably the most severely bullied kid at my school, because I was one social notch above children who were so pitiable it would be rude to mock them.
In early adolescence, not much had changed. My closest friends were the hosts of This American Life, which I discovered through a webcomic about video games. On first listen, I recognized that the adults on that show were unlike me. They were witty and urbane, confident but self-deprecating. And, since I adored them, I figured that to be adored, I should be like them. Thus, I determined that I would fashion myself into an interesting person to listen to, and this remained my approach throughout most of my undergraduate education.
Thus, in my teens, during/after a spell of playing the ukulele in public to attract attention, I:
Memorized poetry and read difficult modernist novels
Got good at telling dramatic stories about my life
Developed opinions about scholarly subjects, like Roland Barthes, Werner Herzog, and so on
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