My friend Premee posted to twitter about having spent an entire conversation with a fork in her mouth because she didn’t want the person talking to her to know she wasn’t using a spoon to eat her yogurt.
It immediately resonated with me because just that afternoon I had walked around the block because the person at the building’s front desk said “Have a nice day,” and I was just going outside to warm up from the air conditioning. Why are we so anxious to preserve the normalcy of our actions?
Walking toward the parking garage at the end of the day, my spouse (with access to the garage) isn’t waiting for me, so I want to turn around and wait outside, but all the other people assume I’m going to my car and this guy holds the door, so I walk into the parking garage and around for a while before heading out.
The next time it happens, I narrate. “Oh!” I say like an actor reciting bad exposition, “Brian isn’t waiting for me. I’ll just wait out here.”
The narrating trick is one I do a lot and it feels only a narrow step removed from schizophrenic. “Yes, I’m biking in a business-y dress and on the sidewalk and without a helmet, you see, I was late to my meeting and I decided to just use my bike because it was there, but I left my helmet in my office… oh I’ve passed you already.”
“Hello, I wasn’t talking to you, I just had this song in my head and I can’t sing and oh now I will pretend I remember the lyrics because you’re looking… bye!”
The sad truth is, other people are probably not paying that close attention to us. They won’t notice the fork or the gym shoes with the dress or the semi-offensive book cover you’re holding against your stomach. They are too busy wondering if we notice their broken shoelace and the ketchup stain on their elbow, because who puts their elbow in ketchup?!?
The perfect metaphor for human anxiety is the mirror at the goth club. I love going to the goth club. I get all dolled up and then I dance, looking around to see if anyone notices my adorable outfit. I glance at the mirror-wall next to the dance floor and then I see why no one has looked at me– the floor is full of people looking intently at themselves in the mirror. If they notice my Goth Ballerina ensamble I worked so hard on, well, it’s just as a backdrop to making sure their makeup hasn’t run.
So… yeah. I’m going to try to stop hiding my yogurt-fork and walking around the block because someone expected me to be going somewhere. But it’s HARD.
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