Good things

Cafeteria has pieces of fried flour tortilla at the salad bar today. I take some for me, Buddy gets some too.

After lunch, as he's closing up his styrofoam container (ooh, our company is Green alright, sigh), I notice there are five or so pieces still inside.

"You're not going to eat those?" I ask, my hand already moving across the table towards the container while making an involuntary grasping motion.

He silently re-opens the container, and I make sure they don't go to waste.

"Fried Carbs," I say. "Dude, what could be better, I'm asking you."

We take a few steps, and I pop the last one in my mouth and begin considering whether to wipe the remaining oil on my pants or what.

It hits me. "Fried Carbs with Sugar."

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

{grins}

Natural extroverts

Came to a realization yesterday, about extroverts (you know, the normal people, as any fellow introvert can tell you).

Her Girliness has been speaking less and less to me lately -- in fact, yesterday, I noticed that I couldn't remember the last time she talked to me. Huh.

I wonder what she thinks I did to her; since, by her behavior towards me, she must think I did something. I feel a weird floaty sensation when I think about not knowing why -- my emotional radar is very sensitive, but I can't imagine (yet) what her motivation is for giving me the silent treatment.

Oh, well, mysteries give some spice to the office work-day, right?

So yesterday afternoon, I'm walking down the long hall to the restroom, look up, and see that she's just come around the corner at the opposite end! D'oh -- I flash to a Dilbert cartoon where the guy is trying to time his smile right, as he passes a coworker in a long hallway.

We close half the distance, and I go to say hello, and it comes out in a friendly sing-song "Hello there!"

She doesn't react at all.

We close the remaining distance, as a chill of received-rudeness washes over me, and I look down at the linoleum tile instead of at her; still smiling, though.

I listen to her strappy-sandaled footsteps continuing down the hallway, until I round the corner.

Damn, I realize, I totally should have looked her in the face as we passed! That would have been awesome!

Missed my opportunity to deflect the rudeness by smiling it right back at her, there.

-----

An hour later, I was mulling over the scene, and thinking about how it puzzled me, because Her Girliness is an extrovert -- she's naturally outgoing, so it should be easy for her to be nice to me even if she doesn't like me (for whatever un-communicated reason), right? She ought to be able to be sunny even if she's not feeling it. It should be effortless for her, shouldn't it? And yet, she seems unable to conceal the fact that she's really uncomfortable around me, and doesn't want to talk to me or make eye contact with me.

It should be effortless.

Hmmm. Effortless because it's easy; because it's always been easy for her, since it's natural... second-nature... she doesn't have to put in the effort I do.... it's a learned skill for me, fer crissakes!...

Ooooh. Hang on a sec. It's natural for her, but it's a skill for me. She coasts along on natural talent; I've worked like hell on my social skills.

I have the social skills. I have them.....she doesn't!

She has. no. actual. social. skills.

Crap! When she's really uncomfortable, she can't hide it!

And here I've just known my whole life that naturally extroverted people had it so easy, and us introverts were doing all the work to fit in... and here's a situation where the extrovert doesn't have the skills to navigate, because she's just been getting by on innate talent, not building skills!

I have what skills there are.

I am going to win this one.

Color me shocked.

Confession

As a natural introvert, I've spent my years gradually picking up the skills to blend better into the world of extroverts. I've found that I can fake it pretty well by now -- if I'm not sure what to say at a given moment, I'll ask myself what would a normal person say? and try that. It works wonderfully, I must say.

What I'm saying is that I've learned to pass decently, that's all. Living in the world as the world is, and all that.

So here's where that's gotten me, as of this morning: I have just become a back-biting weasel.

Heh! Okay, it's not quite that bad. I didn't back-bite anyone, as much as I beat someone to the punch, to make myself look good. To make myself look better than someone else.

I've observed that it's the kind of thing normal people do all the time.

So, here's the set-up. Her Girliness hasn't been talking to me for weeks, now. It's gotten to the point where she actually won't return my "good morning," which I'm pretty darn sure is universally considered to be Rude Behavior.

Anyway, this morning I purposefully said good morning to her in front of some other coworkers, and I didn't hear a response...unfortunately for my greater enjoyment, I don't think the others noticed, which was what I was hoping for.

A few minutes later, I'm filling my water bottle at the office sink, and she's there getting a bagel, and other people are standing around eating bagels, and she actually starts a conversation with me -- not that she ever made eye contact, mind you.

She asks about a new little glitch in the database that's been noted recently, but since we have Supremely Disengaged Management, nobody has given any instructions as to what to do about it. So we're all just ignoring it for now. But for whatever reason, she's decided (three weeks after the advent of the glitch) to bring it up to me. I said amiably that nobody had said anything about it, so I wasn't doing anything about it. "Higher than my pay grade," I actually said. (Please note: I give myself extra points for working literal cliches into conversations.)

She says M (in another department) told her he'd gotten an email, so maybe she'd ask him about it. I said, Nah, if they tell us to do something, I'm all over it -- but if they don't care about it, why should we?

"Oh, well, maybe I'll just ask about it," she says.

Suit yourself, I think, walking back to my desk.

Then I sit down here and think it through a little further -- wait a sec, if she's the one who asks about this glitch, she might make herself look good to the Supremely Disengaged Management. They'll get her phone call or email or whatever, and think, Hey, there's an employee who's going beyond the call -- nevermind the fact that currently, we are all being encouraged in the strongest possible (while totally un-spoken) terms to do as little as possible. She would probably be lucky enough to get credit for speaking up on this.

Rats. I don't want to lose a round, here. If anyone gets credit, I want it. I knew about this glitch from the beginning, so I don't want Her Girliness getting any kudos.

So, I thought to myself, What would a normal person do?

[Sound of gears spinning.]

Ah, of course. A normal person would beat her to it. Now that she's mentioned doing something, and I've counseled her against it, there's no reason I couldn't get to the bosses before she does.

So I fired off a quick little email to a couple of Managers, officially letting them know about the glitch, and asking for direction.

Oh, I am evil.

Or just normal?

Ah, well.