oh, ha ha, hi!

I can’t remember the context, but not terribly long ago I was having a conversation with my mom and she said something like, “well that isn’t surprising, both you and your brother are shy people.” I probably retorted with some sort of “psshaw,” or “D.J’s shy, but I’m definitely not shy,” and I’m sure I didn’t lack conviction when saying it—I’ve believed this for a long time. When I was four or five I admittedly used to struggle with wall-flower syndrome, quite literally, in fact: my dad has video footage of my first grade theatrical debut where I played a wilting daisy. I didn’t have any lines, but I wasn’t supposed to be dead, either. All I had to do was stand in a line with a tulip and a buck-toothed rose while Kimmy, Mandy, and some other Godforsaken Y-y, who played bees wearing springy antennas on their heads instead of matronly cardboard, approached me and asked permission to land on and pollinate me, which totally sounds gross from a gutter-minded adult perspective, but this was a LUTHERAN school and it was some sort of Christian parable, I assure you. Anyway, apparently my stage fright was so intense that I wouldn’t lift my head to face the audience the entire time.

My parents had kind of a unique solution in tackling the problem by drawing up a chart. Each time I looked somebody in the eye at church and replied “hello” when approached, I would get a star. When I accumulated enough stars, I would get a pony. But if I was super ballsy and approached the Tall Person myself by initiating conversation, I would be on the equivalent of the Cranium “fast track” if you will, earning a separate set of stars that would net me a sandbox. I pitied my parents’ inexplicable greenness when it came to prize patrol. I needed more stars to earn the pony, true, but mumbling “hi” every Sunday proved to be way easier than attempting to converse with an adult. And in this case, who cared? Given the choice, what kid in their right mind would pick a sandbox over a freaking PONY? Seriously guys?

Curses!

That was a phase I had no choice but to outgrow after two moves to two different states, the last one coming at a critical juncture in my development. A new kid in the 7th grade at a small school who doesn’t strive to fit in and say the right things is far more susceptible to ridicule than an 11th grader, who is bound to simply be ignored. I figured I better start talking and seeming approachable to minimize the amount of talking about me, which mostly worked. Not long after that I fell into the theater crowd, and from there it was a mere puddle jump to being crowned “Most Opinionated” in my senior poll and a nearly seamless transition to college life, followed most recently by a number of improv classes (and improv is scary as shit) and even a stand-up comedy class.

Suck it, shyness! I thumb my nose at thee!

Like anybody, though, I still have shy moments, days where I’m not feeling particularly “on” and have no desire to feign conversational effort. A lot of this involves phone calls. I’ve finally finessed a relaxed, pleasant phone manner when I absolutely need to call someone outside my immediate circle of friends and family, but I will definitely go out of my way to avoid doing so. A couple summers ago I actually hid behind a large rock in the middle of our driveway because my mom was stalking around the house with our cordless yelling for me to come talk to one of her friends about the latest episode of Big Brother, which she erroneously assumed I would be chomping at the bit to drop everything to discuss over the phone with a 50-something year-old woman.

“What are you doing?" my brother asked as he got out of the car after a night out.

“I’m not her trained circus poodle!” I hissed.

But we all have our proverbial Large Rocks we hide behind from time to time, right? It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s time for a Paxil prescription.

Or does it?

“Do you know you blush sometimes when you talk to people?” a coworker asked me a few months ago. "It's cute."

I wasn’t aware, firstly, and secondly, I beg to differ. I am not in fifth grade delivering a book report in front of the class. Assuming I didn’t have a "Dear Seventeen" moment by dropping a tampon in front of a cute boy or watching a sex scene with my parents, there is no reason I should turn red when carrying on a perfectly normal, non-inflammatory conversation with someone. Since he's mentioned this, I've definitely been more cognizant. I can be at work in a meeting and talking about something as innocuous as our database, and all of a sudden I'll realize my face is hot, like I've been caught on Redtube. Someone will ask me the time on the subway and I'll fluster, my cheeks internalizing the request as me not being helpful or fast enough. My Irish pastiness doesn't do me any favors either, since the fluctuation is clear as day. Maybe I should move to a warm climate and just strive to be sun burnt all the time?

Another more recent issue is with friendly greetings, and I'm pretty sure this was in a Seinfeld episode, which perhaps explains why it wasn't particularly salient for me until after I moved to Brooklyn. Okay, native Brooklynites: I don't know what your deal is when it comes to the whole kissing thing. We aren't European, and kissing anybody other than your SO or maybe a close family member definitely does not happen in the Midwest. In Jesusland, we HUG, which allows us (me) to bypass this whole maddening train of thought:

"Oh, shit, a friendly Brooklynite. Air kiss or cheek kiss? Air kiss--"ugh, that seemed non-committal and snotty. I'll bet it offended them that I didn't actually go for the cheek." Cheek kiss (hopefully not followed by a jokey " whoa" which is completely mortifying and obviously lets me know right off the bat that I am gauche) "ugggh, so personal--they probably think I'm creepy--why don't I just grab a boob/testicle while I'm over here?"

Though a friend attempted to school me in the proper etiquette regarding what kiss goes where, I've found that there isn't any rhyme or reason to which kind I deliver to whom, as I'm usually just in panic mode when going in for the kill and wanting to get it over with. HUGS, people! They convey the same familiarity! And if you are uncomfortable hugging someone, why would you want to kiss them or even mock-kiss them? More importantly, why do I feel like breaking into a cold sweat over this? Why do I leave a person over-analyzing the goodbye, convinced he or she is going to go home and write that I am TOTALLY WEIRD and probably a panty sniffer in their burn book?

But I think I most disappointed myself during my recent trip home for Christmas. If I haven't already mentioned, I come from one of those towns where it's next to impossible to patronize an establishment without it turning into some sort of reunion. Should I make a trip to Wegmans, Walmart, the six-cinema movie theater, or one of the handful of restaurants in town, I'm going to spot someone from my past. To deal with this inevitability, (and this is a maddening upstate thing) I've also come to expect that I'll be cordially ignored by everyone who isn't a friendly acquaintance, and fine--more forthright than the whole genteel Southern fakey-fake thing, and this girl certainly doesn't need your forced smile and wave to get her through her day, especially if you secretly hate my guts or we were never particularly friendly.

However, what if you spot no less than five people from your past who ostensibly fall under the "friendly acquaintance" umbrella...and you are suddenly too bashful and tongue-tied to approach them and say a single damn word? And we're not talking "spotted them from a distance/I'm sure they didn't see me," we're talking, "five people who I could have touched on the arm and were most definitely aware of my presence, yet I couldn't make eye contact with them or utter a solitary word. One of these guys--and I realize that nowadays this holds the equivalent of a Dixie cup in water, but still--is my freaking Myspace friend, for Pete's sake. Not a word. Recognizing that it would be easy to simply justify, "well they could have said hi to me first,  and it isn't as if they approached me and then I gave them the brush-off--why are they being so standoffish?," am I overreacting in my discomfort? 

Thing is, my conscience indicates "no." Each pseudo run-in left me feeling embarrassed and a bit disgusted with myself, convinced that these five people were going to go home thinking,"God, what a bitch," and given my apparent aloofness, I can't say I entirely disagree. 

I am a 28-year-old woman, not a little girl collecting stickers in pursuit of a lame pony--why can't I just suck it up and say "hi?" 

How do you deal with bouts of shyness?