Saturday, April 11, 2009

Complaint: OMG I’m like totally S.I. *

*Socially Inept


Okay they say it happens, but it’s really hitting home. I was just on the phone with an old friend from college. Haven’t spoken in over 20 years, but have emailed extensively over the past four or five months getting back in touch. We write, we blog, we try to comment on each other’s blogs, etc. Relationship re-established.

Then we talked on the phone. And I deteriorated into a gibbering idiot. We’re planning to meet each other’s families next week. But I feel like my verbal diarrhea is pretty explosive and I’m hoping I can reign it in before then.

See, I’ve spent so much time talking to my kids and other people’s kids and other people about kids that I fear I’ve become one of THOSE people.

You know, the ones who talk about their kids all the time. The ones who have no life because they’re living through their children. Saints preserve us, I’m one of the shameless gushers I used to mock.

But I must mock no more.

My old friend and I had a perfectly good conversation, but I just felt like I was babbling and incoherent. When we write to each other, we can edit, and I definitely come across as wittier and glibber in print. In person? Not so much. It’s all gush gush, giggle, giggle. It’s embarrassing.

Not that there’s anything wrong with enthusiasm. As we’ve discussed, (okay as I’ve proclaimed) in a previous post, I am an enthusiastic person. And I’m okay with that, exclamation point.

But talking to my friend made me remember that we knew each other in a different time and place and that so very much has changed, for me, and of course, for him. He is married now, as am I; he has a stepchild, I have two small children. He is gainfully and professionally employed; I have two small children.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

There was so much I wanted to do when I was young, and granted, I have done quite a bit of it (lots of it in my 20s) but I kind of put off most other things with this whole raising children gig. (Which, by the way, I very much wanted and continue to want to do. I just think the whole childcare/work balance issue needs to balance better soon.) This whole lack of identity as a stay at home parent is really, for lack of a better word, professionally and socially atrophying.

That’s what I was trying to get at when I said I’m socially inept. I remember going out in public for the first time after my first child was born, with another new friend/new mom. We went out to eat at one of those loud, over-stimulating, massive-portion-serving Texas Cheesecake Despository type of restaurants, and since it was Los Angeles, the waiter was a cute young actor who knew how to charm. The two of us were simply unequipped to deal with his saucy banter. We were drooling, sleep-deprived morons incapable of wit or substance. We barely knew what to order.

It was a little scary. Then I got really busy with my kids for the next six years. And now I’m coming up for air. My family’s situation is such that we may well be relocating, which is both exciting and exhausting.

Starting all over is a great chance to “start fresh,” whatever that means. And now that my kids are older and less needy, it is finally time for me to come out of professional and social hiding.

And that’s scary.

Because I’ve been under the tortoise shell of my children for six years.

I know meeting up with my old friend will be fun, because he is a person of substance, wit and kindness. I am sure he will forgive my babbling about my kids, and my myopic view of the world which I am only now just starting to expand.

I just hope I can keep up with the banter.

1 comment:

  1. Well, don't forget, we're ALL wittier, glibber, more urbane, and more capable of parallel construction in print than in real-life. I'm sure your friend will be feeling just as awkward and goofy when you meet. Good luck, though! :-) PRINGLE (well, we all know what THAT is).

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