I totally just won the U.K. Lottery. SEE YOU LATER LOSERS.

Confession: I got suckered recently.

My dad told me a story the not-too-long-ago on the phone. It was funny in a kind of weird, distressing way, so I passed it along to someone.

The story my dad told me?

“This woman who works with your aunt has an autistic son. One day, after he’d gotten home from school, he called her at work. ‘I caught a troll,’ he said. ‘I’ve got him locked in the closet.’ She thought he was making things up, but he was very insistent, so she called her husband at work and asked him to go home and check on their son. He did, and heard banging coming from inside a closet. When he opened the closet, over his son’s protests, he found a very indignant little person, who had been going door-to-door working for the Census bureau. The son had thought he was a troll, overpowered him, and locked him in the closet.”

Sound familiar?

It should. It probably happened to a friend of a friend of yours, or your brother-in-law’s cousin, or your hairdresser’s son.

It’s a goddamn urban legend. 

Now, you’re reading this and thinking I’m a complete dumbass. And honestly, I have no idea why this didn’t raise a red flag to me. I think because it was my father telling it to me, and my father doesn’t usually fall for garbage. And he heard it from my uncle, who is very serious about things. As is my aunt. They are not the usual people who are suckered into crap.

It didn’t even hit me until a week later, when the person I’d passed the story along to said, “You know what’s funny? I told that story to my aunt, and she told me it also happened to a friend of a friend of hers! She must be friends with your aunt’s co-worker!” Ding ding ding! FRIEND OF A FRIEND. Shit shit shit. I’d passed along an urban legend. I’d become THAT GIRL. I was one step away from forwarding chain emails WRITTEN ALL IN CAPS WITH EMBARRASSING TYPOS and LOTS OF LOLS and HEARTS and CARTOONS OF FLAGS telling people that Obama is a terrorist because I’d read it somewhere on the interwebs. I might as well start wearing kittycat sweaters and getting a blue rinse in my tight old-lady perm.

What’s even more embarrassing is that I’m a huge fan of urban legends. I love to debunk those stupid emails. I’ve read books on the genesis of urban legends. I used to be obsessed with that awful show Jonathan Frakes hosted, Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction. Did anyone else ever used to watch this? Apparently it aired from 1997 to 2002, but I caught it on reruns years later. It was horrendous. It had about six segments per episode, and you watched each segment (the segments were about ghosts, psychic phenomena, urban legends, and various other odd occurrences) and decided if it was a fact or fiction. Then at the end, Jonathan Frakes told you if you were right. Only, sometimes the show was wrong, and it would tell you that an urban legend was a fact, and that was off-putting. What can you expect, it was on FOX. The reenactments were horrendously produced, too. They were about as low-budget as they come. Like, people would run across a “set” and the walls would shake because they were made of cardboard. That bad. I LOVED IT. It was one of those shows that aired in repeats on Sunday afternoons when there was nothing else on and I’d get suckered in and I’d yell at the television. “THAT IS NOT A TRUE STORY JONATHAN FRAKES!” I would gleefully shout, as my roommate shook her head and wondered why I watched something that was obviously incorrect and awful.

I like urban legends because they are our generation’s version of fairy tales, passed from person to person, like back in the day when our ancestors would sit around the campfire telling stories to one another. Only they’re usually pretty stupid. But the ones that aren’t entertain me to no end. I love the creativity involved in them! The good old fashioned storytelling!

My favorites are the scary ones – like the gang initation/headlight thing (which many people I know ARE CONVINCED IS TOTALLY TRUE!!!) – or the really stupid ones, like the woman who dried her poodle in the microwave. I’m easily amused.

I get a lot of urban legend email forwards from people, which I like to forward back to them, with the Snopes article debunking their claim attached. The top ones they send are that Facebook is going to make us start paying for content (no they’re not), that Obama is a terrorist for so many reasons (I get this one because I’m one of those goddamn liberals and I live in the most goddamn liberal town full of goddamn liberals who are goddamn brainwashing me using their goddamn liberal brainwashing tactics – since I’m originally from a bastion of conservatism, people there think it is their duty to educate me that my beliefs are WRONG and I am SUPPORTING TERRORISTS) (and Obama isn’t a terrorist, so STOP IT PEOPLE),  and a million of those chain letters telling me that if I don’t forward them, everyone I love is going to die in a horrible bloody chainsaw tractor accident and then get hit by a meteorite sent by a  vengeful God.

STOP SENDING ME GARBAGE.

I even get them at work. It’s gotten so bad that my IT department had to send out a memo earlier in the month telling people the signs to look for that what you’re forwarding to people is probably an urban legend and not a very hot tip that your friends need to know in order to survive and not die screaming.

The tips from the IT department:

It suggests tragic consequences for not performing some action.

It promises money or gift certificates for performing some action.

It claims it's not a hoax.

There are multiple spelling or grammatical errors, or the logic is contradictory.

There is a statement urging you to forward the message.

It has already been forwarded multiple times (evident from the trail of email headers in the body of the message).

These are good tips, IT department. However, people don’t pay attention to them. They read these tips, they think, “Hey! Good tips!” and then forward the next damn hoax that comes along, because they think that the tips don’t apply to them. People think they are exempt from the rules of urban legends. Much like me and my stupid passing along of the troll story, they think “but this will not happen to ME! I would not pass along an urban legend!”

Let’s look at these tips in more detail.

It suggests tragic consequences for not performing some action/It promises money or gift certificates for performing some action/There is a statement urging you to forward the message.

People still think – STILL, and this started happening EONS ago – that Bill Gates is going to send them money for forwarding an email. It’s not going to happen. Also, those chain emails that say that if you don’t forward an email to the ten most fabulous women you know within the next fifteen minutes or you will NEVER FIND LOVE EVER and also, if you don’t send it back to the person who forwarded it to you, SHE WILL KNOW WHAT A SHITTY FRIEND YOU ARE? Well, color me shitty, because I just hit delete, asshole. STOP SPAMMING ME. Seriously. Why are you wasting our mutual time on this? Why aren’t you WORKING? At WORK? I mean, I know why I’m not. I’ve got a very important and socially-relevant blog about important things like whorish Halloween costumes and pie charts to write and if I don’t write in it, there are literally TENS of people who will be disappointed. But you? And the worst thing, one of the people who sent me the most of these, before I completely blocked her email, was in the medical field. Um. You’re supposed to be saving people’s lives, I think? And also, years of medical school, and you still think that chain letters both work and are something that you need to fill your friend’s email inboxes with? If I ever get injured, please bring me to any hospital but yours. Thanks in advance.

It claims it’s not a hoax.

I love this. That’s someone sending you an email telling you you’ve won the British Lottery, or someone telling you that they’re the Prince of Uganda and you need to deposit their check into your bank account, or a homeless person coming up to you, smelling of beer, telling you they just need $20 for a bus ticket to visit their sick mother. “But it MUST be true! It SAYS SO! Right HERE!” Yes! Yes it does. Well! Then how could it be A COMPLETE AND TOTAL FALSEHOOD. Because NO ONE HAS EVER LIED TO ANYONE EVER IN PRINT.

There are multiple spelling or grammatical errors, or the logic is contradictory.

Well, if it’s coming from one of the people who usually send me this kind of crap, the spelling errors could either be in the original message, or coming from them, honestly, so this one’s hard to tell. And as for logic – well, logic isn’t really the strong suit of people who are sending these things. People who are sending these things think that a multitude of celebrities died falling off of cliffs, that black and white caterpillars are poisonous, and casinos pump extra oxygen in to keep gamers awake and playing longer. 

It has already been forwarded multiple times (evident from the trail of email headers in the body of the message).

Then it MUST be true. Look at all the people who have already seen it! THIS IS A FAMOUS EMAIL.

Here’s my urban legend advice.

If you hear “friend of a friend” – GO TO SNOPES.COM.

If it sounds overly jingoistic and suspect – GO TO SNOPES.COM.

If you get an email forward with a lot of caps, misspellings, and teddy bear cartoons – DELETE IT.

If you send me garbage like this – BE PREPARED TO GET A SNOPES LINK FORWARDED BACK TO YOU, or, alternately, GO DIE IN A FIRE YOU’RE WASTING MY PRECIOUS TIME.

Now, send this post to everyone you know within the next ten minutes or you will not get the money that’s coming to you, you will get boils on your face, your hair will fall out, your prince will NEVER come, and you’ll get crabs the size of cockroaches. A friend of a friend told me so. IT MUST BE TRUE.

If at First You Don't Succeed, Skydiving is Not for You.

It’s Sunday, and so far today, I have been muy productive. Are you totally impressed by my bilingual abilities? You should be, because they are dope. The other things I can say in Spanish are “en fuego!” and “el gato!” AND I can combine my three Spanish words/phrases to make the very impressive “el gato es muy en fuego!” which may or may not be grammatically correct but makes for a humorous phrase that hopefully won’t ever have to be used in real life. It would be a funny thing for someone to pop into a room, say, and then leave, all random-like. I would like that. That should be added to every sitcom ever, don’t you think?

So anyway, very productive. I’m having a visitor tomorrow so I did some housecleaning, which included the very classy and not-at-all disgusting tasks of spot-cleaning cat urine out of the hall carpet; scrubbing grime from the tub floor; and scooping the litterbox. I know! The Queen of England has NOTHING on my glamour, NOTHING.

I had two things I wanted to discuss today. I have to get prettified soon and go see a matinee of a show that one of my favorite local actors is in, and it’s at a fancy theater so I probably shouldn’t wear my jeans that are ripped out at the ass and my “Zombies ate my Brain” t-shirt, as much as I love them both.

First: there is a huge problem happening locally that needs to be addressed.

Suicide by skydiving.

Before I start, I just want to say that there is nothing funny about suicide. I am not making fun of suicide. Please let me repeat this in case you decide to get up-in-arms and all “AMY IS MOCKING MENTAL ILLNESS YO SHE HAS NO FEELINGS OR HUMAN EMOTION.” Nope. Not the case. Actually have more empathy toward people with depressive tendencies than a lot of other things in the world. THERE IS NOTHING FUNNY ABOUT SUICIDE.

However, two people in the past three years in my area have killed themselves by jumping out of a plane. ON PURPOSE.

This is very, very distressing.

First, in 2008, this young man pretended to be taking photos for a school project and went up in a small plane with people skydiving. He then LEAPT FROM THE PLANE WITHOUT A CHUTE before the other people in the plane could stop him and landed on a house. And died, obviously.

This was disturbing on a lot of levels and we talked about it at work a LOT. I mean, I get people who want to end it all. I do. Things get overwhelming. But in such a painful, scary, and over-the-top way? That boggles my mind. You can’t have been thinking, as you fell, “This was a very, very good idea!” I can’t imagine you thought that, right? I get pills. Or even cutting. But jumping out of a plane? That takes sincere dedication. Also, can you even IMAGINE being the people who lived in that house. “What was that NOISE on the ROOF, Harold?” “I’ll go check it out OH MY GOD RUTH IT IS A DEAD MAN.”

But you know, I was pretty sure this was a one-time occurrence. How often do you get suicide by sky-diving? And it’s not like I live in a HUGE area. I mean, sure, it’s a big area, but it’s not the sky-diving capital of the world, or anything.

Then, last week?

This happened. 

And this gentleman was an actual skydiver, who had jumped over 9,000 times! Who taught skydiving! And he went up, left a note, jumped, PURPOSELY UNHOOKED HIS PARACHUTE, and then fell to his death.

This is even sadder. I mean, this was a man who wanted, I think, to die doing what he loved. So awful.

I don’t even know what conclusions to draw from this. I can’t imagine wanting to commit suicide in what has to be the scariest way possible, other than getting eaten by bears. This is just incomprehensible to me. I suppose people who have actually skydived might have different opinions on this? Maybe it’s a lovely way to go. Maybe your adrenaline is so high that you wouldn’t feel a thing when you hit, I don’t know. But I’m scared of planes and I’m scared of heights and I’m scared of jumping off of things (including small things, like curbs or steps, because, as mentioned repeatedly, CLUMSY) so I know if I were ever in a skydiving situation? I would not even be able to jump. I would stand there in the doorway until someone shoved me out or they landed the plane. No way I’d jump out of a plane. And definitely not to my death. Eeesh.

Oh, and sidebar, eaten by bears. Remember that guy that WAS eaten by bears? Do most people find that sad or funny? Is it awful I think he totally got what he deserved and the only person I feel any sympathy for is his girlfriend? THAT GUY THOUGHT HE WAS A BEAR. And that the bears were SIMPATICO with him. Dude, you so deserved to be bear chow. No sympathy. Sympathy for your poor, deluded girlfriend you got chomped along with you, but not with you. YOU ARE NOT A BEAR. But you ARE bear FOOD. I didn’t watch the documentary about this because I don’t care to watch crazy people who think they are simpatico with wild animals. Wild animals are WILD ANIMALS. You are insane to think otherwise.

Second thing we have to discuss. Personal space.

So I was playing around on Wikipedia. Sometimes I get caught in a Wikipedia link situation and I get trapped and forget where I came from, like a maze. I honestly don’t know what brought me to this, but I found this the other day:

This is a graphic of the personal space with which the average American is comfortable with various people in their lives. This made me laugh until I almost choked to death.

OK, so first, I have total personal space issues. Yesterday, I went to a concert. It was my first outdoor street concert. I’ve been to outdoor concerts before, but this was a free street concert thing. I’ve always had to pay for outdoor seating before. So I went in expecting it to be insanity. I avoid free things, because usually free things are full of looneys and/or people who are badly behaved and/or people who are entitled because nothing brings out entitlement like giving someone something for free. I’m going to write a scholarly paper about this someday and it will win a prize. Is there a prize for awesome scholarly papers? What if I include many pie charts?

So, outdoor concert. Not as bad as you might think, but my personal space was TOTALLY VIOLATED. There was a guy pretty much humping his girlfriend in front of me (who, apropos of nothing, apparently thought he was Robert Smith from The Cure, what with the hair and the stench of emo desperation and black nail polish and such); there was this weird group of throwback Woodstock hippies in front of me, one of whom was a man smoking a cigar as big as he was and that smelled like burning hair perfume for an hour and fifteen minutes; there was some kid with a soul patch (heaven and saints preserve us from affected facial hair) who decided smoking a GIGANTIC joint in the middle of the street with all of the cops milling around was a good idea (and this just tickled the SHIT out of the Woodstockians – “OMG, do you SMELL that? Boy, THAT sure does take me back. Ha ha ha. Just like the old days!” Shut up, Patchouli Joe, there’s nothing awesome about smoking weed in the middle of a crowded street with adorable children with painted faces and balloon animals running around, it’s just douchey) and there was a guy who thought this was a mosh pit who kept smacking the shit out of my arm as he flailed around aimlessly to every single song. I love the band, I loved the concert, and I actually didn’t have a breakdown (I think I might have had a bit of a contact high, come to think of it), but I did go home and take a hot shower because PERSONAL SPACE ISSUES.

(Oh, also? I don’t have an issue with smoking weed, per se. So again, don’t be judgey. I just think probably there’s a time and place. Also, I think it makes you very, very stupid, giggly, paranoid, and a waste of space, in 99% of cases. I don’t care for drugs that make my amazing brain stop working as quickly and efficiently as it does. And yes, I am speaking from experience, so you know what? Suck it, haters.)

ANYWAY BACK ON TOPIC FOR THE LOVE OF PETE.

This graphic says that the only people we’re comfortable coming in our “intimate distance” bubble are “family, pets, and very close friends.” And that bubble is EIGHTEEN INCHES from us. That is only a FOOT AND A HALF. You know who gets that close to me? My cats. My nephew. And people who want to get punched. That is SO CLOSE. That is all up in my face. No thank you. One time, a person I know who was chemically altered decided he was going to lick my neck and ears because he gets away with that shit with other mutual acquaintances and apparently the chemicals he was on told him it was a good idea to try it with me, too. He’s very old and I almost broke him into a million pieces shoving him away and running to the bathroom to Silkwood scrub myself. GAH WHAT THE HELL.

“Personal distance” is 1.5 to 4 feet and is for friends and acquaintances. Since I’m reserving my intimate distance bubble for cats and nephew, I’m grudgingly allowing people I love into my personal distance bubble. BUT DON’T YOU GET ANY CLOSER.

“Social distance” – 4 to 12 feet; “Public space,” more than 12 feet. I want to create a final category: “Keep the frig away from me space,” 27.5 feet. I think at that distance I won’t have to smell your cologne, deal with your nonsense, have you make weird eye contact, have you touch my arm while we’re talking (what the hell? Get that off me! I don’t know that you washed after you peed! GERMY HANDS OFF JACKASS!) or various other things that I find upsetting and make me want to curl up in a ball and rock.

What? Yes, I’m totally fun in social situations. Why do you ask?

Alright. Time to be pretty. Christina Aguilera says I’m beautiful so IT MUST BE TRUE. I suppose it can’t hurt to brush my hair, though.

All the Party People in the House say…“Meh”

If you’ve ever been around theater people, you know they like to socialize. A lot. Drinks after rehearsal; cast parties after a successful run of a show. I don’t do these things. I used to. Then again, I used to drink regularly, which made these things tolerable. There is nothing sadder than being the only sober person in a room full of theater people when you’re already not good at social interaction. There is a LOT. Of DRAMA. At a THEATER PARTY. People are drinking. There is yelling. Someone always ends up crying. Someone else ends up on the ground for some reason. There are fights. I haven’t been to one in years, but this is how they used to be, and I’ve heard stories and seen photos – it seems it’s still going on. I want to remember my cast and crew fondly, not for the one night of drunken debauchery spent post-performances. Also, I’m pretty sure I’d say something stupid at the party and no one would speak to me again. I can be really blunt. If someone’s doing something stupid, I usually call them on it. “That’s a really stupid idea, I can’t back that,” I told a friend recently who is rushing into a romance that I am convinced is ill-fated. When I told people I said that they were shocked. “You can’t SAY that to someone!” they said. Why? You can’t? Really? Even if it’s the truth? Because it’s a really stupid idea. I’m not saying something that isn’t true. It’s really, really stupid. Like, Thelma and Louise driving off the cliff stupid. Like saying “I’ll be right back” in a B-horror movie stupid. Like drinking anything Jim Jones gives you stupid. I can’t say that? That’s frowned upon? Like, by societal norms, or something? That’s annoying. I’d want someone to stop a younger me before she decided to go out with that one crazy guy that time, why wouldn’t people want a warning?

See, I don’t go to parties. (I don’t go to crowded movie theaters, malls, or concerts, if I can help it, either.) There are three reasons for this:

1.   I have mild-to-moderate social anxiety. The idea of being forced to relate, on a social level, with people makes me nervous. I feel like I’m going to say something stupid. Then, in order to cover up my nervousness, I do one of two things: I start rambling (this causes people to think I’m adorably neurotic, have Tourette’s, or am a basket case) or I clam up entirely and stand in a corner like the bad fairy who wasn’t invited to the christening, glowering at everyone. None of these is really preferable to staying home, which is what I end up doing, if I can help it. 

2.   I have agoraphobia. I don’t like crowds. I have a physical aversion to being touched, even by accident, by strangers. (I don’t like much to be touched by people I know, either. I kind of need to be locked up in a crystal tower for the rest of my life to avoid the issues that plague me.) Large crowds = lots and lots and lots of touching, usually by accident, sometimes on purpose. Do you know about frotteurism? It’s a thing. It’s a real thing. People might be doing this to you. That bump against your thigh might not have been by accident. Think about this the next time you’re in a crowd. That doesn’t make you nervous? Seriously? 

3.   I hate people. 

The first two are real issues, which I suppose I could work on with the help of a team of psychiatrists, drugs, aversion therapy, what-have-you, and come out all shiny-happy-people on the other side. Here’s the thing. I’ve been to therapy. Therapy sucks, and doesn’t work for me. Neither do pills. I know, I know. “My therapist is awesome!” “My pills are a godsend!” “Are you a Christian Scientist?” I’m happy for you, I really am, and no, I totally believe in better living through pharmacology. My brain doesn’t work like other people’s brains do, I’ve tried both therapy and drugs, and I don’t want to be a zombie robot person again, which is what drugs do to me, and I don’t want to tell some stranger – a stranger I am paying my life savings to – my issues, either. I mean, that’s what the Internet’s for, right? Strangers you don’t have to pay will listen to your problems! (No, Nervous Nellie, I’m not going to tell you my problems. Relax. They’re none of your business.) 

The last one – well, yeah, I hate people. I really, really hate 90% of people. Oh, what? No! Not you! I couldn’t possibly mean YOU! Most people are – how to put this nicely? Kind of useless. They don’t make an effort. They don’t think before they act. They ignore obvious social cues. They – and this is one of my number one pet peeves of all time – waste my time. 

I have very, very limited time. I work two jobs. I have what amounts to almost a full-time job at the theater where I volunteer. I am home, on average, one or two nights a week, other than the time I’m sleeping. So when I have free time, it is a luxury. People that have no consideration for that time make me want to throttle them. If I am on my way home from work, and you stop me for “just a minute” to chat, even when I say I’m going to be late for something else? RUDE. If I’m on my way home from volunteering, and I’m so ready to sleep that I can barely keep my eyes open, and you decide you’re lonely and you want it to be social hour and WON’T.STOP.TALKING? RUDE. If I’m doing something, and it’s working fine, and you think I should be doing it differently just because you’re a time-wasting shit-weasel with nothing better to do all day than to think up ways to waste my time and fray my nerves? RUDE. If you tell me you’ll be somewhere at a certain time and you show up half an hour late and I could have been doing something else with that time? RUDE and INCONSIDERATE. If you tell me you’re going to call me and you don’t and I was waiting around for it? RUDE. Do I need to go on? I think you get it. Wasting my time is a cardinal sin with me. Like, if I had been Moses with the Ten Commandments, that would totally have been #2: 

THOU SHALT NOT WASTE MY TIME 

#1, of course, is, as always: 

THOU SHALT TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THINE OWN SHIT 

I haven’t decided on the other 8 yet. One of them has to do with waiting your turn in lines (whether at a store, in a line of cars waiting to merge, whatever), though. One is about not shitting where you eat (literally and figuratively.) And one is about not touching me. That’s #3.  

NO TOUCHING 

Because Arrested Development quotes belong on the New and Improved Shiny Ten Commandments. 

Do you know people like this? I call them Time Sucks. (Sucks like they suck away your time, not “they suck,” but they also do suck, so it works on many levels and is clever like that.) There are definite rules to dealing with a Time Suck. First: recognizing a time suck. They have sad and/or desperate eyes. They are needy. When you are around them, time….sloooowssss….downnnnnn. The rest of the world, however, the world you are missing, seems to be going by at a frenetic pace you are desperate to rejoin, but you cannot, because you! Have been captured! By a Time Suck! The key rule in avoiding Time Sucks: be firm. NO WAFFLING. Tell the Time Suck – FIRMLY – “No, I’m sorry, no time now.” Do not be fooled by the sad eyes or passive-aggressive, “Oh, ok, I was just…” NO! It is a TRICK! You will be looking at vacation photos until DOOMSDAY, I am TELLING YOU! Briskly walk away! You have a MISSION and PURPOSE! The MISSION and PURPOSE is to get out of the Time Suck’s orbit, because I am telling you, he or she WILL SUCK YOU IN AND YOU WILL DIE THERE AND YOUR DEATH WILL BE SLOW! SLOW AND BORING! 

Also, listen, I am almost always exhausted. I have this hereditary thing where I can’t sleep. Sometimes I can. But not for long. And not well. So I often am running on very little sleep. This makes me cranky. Some days I’ve gotten more sleep and I’m better than others. But you don’t want to bother me on the days I got less than four hours. You really don’t want to load me up with trivial details. Sometimes I yell. Sometimes I just wander away. Sometimes I say words that aren’t in the correct order and make no sense. It’s never very entertaining. Mostly, it’s scary. See? It’s best, if you know you have something stupid and worthless and time-wastey you want to share? To stay right away from me. Because I do not care for it, and mentally, I am not able to function on the level it takes to deal with it. 

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes, people. Hate. Here’s the thing, though. Unless I know you pretty well, you would have no idea if I hated you or not. I can count on one hand the number of people who know me well enough to read my facial expressions to tell if I’m just being polite or if I want to smack you for being an ass. One of my theater friends is excellent at this. She knows just when to swoop in and rescue me. We have shorthand for it: flames. This is from the movie Clue. Which I love. Irrationally. If you don’t, you might have missed the bus to crazytown. You love Clue, right? (No, not Clueless. Which is also fun, but a very different movie.) If you do, you probably know the scene: Madeline Kahn is talking about the woman her husband had an affair with. “I hated her…so much. It – It – the - flames…on the side of my face….burning…” And she acts it out, and it is brilliant, with her hand crawling up the side of her face. You know about this, right? I suppose you could YouTube it, but I’m not even going to give you a link, because I want you to get the whole movie right now and watch it, because the entire thing is a big old bowl of awesomesauce. Anyway, my theater friend knows when I am having flames, and she insinuates herself between me and the person who is causing me to flame out, and says something like, “Amy! I need you for an important thing, in the place!” and helps me with a timely escape before I roll up my script into a tight tube and give them a hasty and unplanned tracheotomy with it. 

If you want to get all psychological, I’m sure this all stems from me rejecting people before they can reject me, because I’m a beautiful broken disaster of a woman who was a severe bullying victim for most of her formative years. Or, if you want to be more practical about it and stop being judgmental and thinking you know me because you don’t, a lot of people are just really, really stupid, and small talk makes me want to scream. I don’t want to chat. I want to get shit done. I want to be doing something important; if there is nothing important to be doing, I want to either be on my couch watching television, or sleeping. These are my priorities. Chatting about what happened at rehearsal for a show I’m not involved in, what some guy I don’t even know said one time and how shocking that was, or how much your cell phone plan costs you per month, then broken down per day, really is not a judicious use of the small amount of leisure time I have, thanks, though. I know. It’s all about knowing how to play the game. I’ll never get ahead in this world without knowing this very basic skill, how to chat mindlessly about nothing. Fine. If that’s the case, I’ll stay where I am. As mentioned, I hate and fear time sucks; small talk = a major time suck. 

I break down social invitations (the ones where I have a choice of attending; some are, unfortunately, mandatory) thusly: a. will I enjoy it more than watching television or sleeping? b. will it cause a nervous breakdown of epic proportions? If I can safely answer yes and no to these questions, I will attend. If not, no, thanks. So if you ask me out and I say yes, congratulations! You are more important to me than television or my bed, and not likely to cause me to weep in the bathroom. 

This having been said, I am, above all else, a theater person. I went to school to learn how to act; when called upon to attend a function where it matters that I interact in an adult fashion, I do so with aplomb. I’m not saying I enjoy myself. I can honestly count on one hand the number of times in the past ten years or so that I’ve enjoyed a social function. But people don’t know that. I’m very well-behaved. I can, even - and have, even, and will, again, I’m sure – MC the event. In front of everyone. I know! Fancy! I’m good at it. I take it on like a role – I’m playing the part of a socially-poised adult who likes to entertain. And I knock that role out of the park. I make people laugh; I make things run smoothly; I improvise and goof around and I should get a damn Oscar, honestly, because inside I’m screaming get me OUT of here, already, TOO MANY GODDAMN PEOPLE ONE OF THEM MIGHT TOUCH ME! 

There are people who are suffering, much more severely than I am, with social anxiety. Jessica has been blogging her way through dealing with her issues with it, and I applaud her bravery – she’s facing the problem head-on, like an adult does, with grace and humor. I’m taking the other route – the Bartleby the Scrivener route, I guess. When faced with something he didn’t want to do, Bartleby said “I would prefer not to.” This is my go-to answer. I would prefer not to. I would prefer not to go to a party where I’m going to spend the whole time afraid to open my mouth because I’m afraid I’ll look like a fool and I won’t enjoy it anyway. I would prefer not to. I can, I could force myself to, but would prefer not to. I thank everyone for attempting to include me, and I appreciate the invitations, and once and a while, I’ll actually accept one, but for the most part, when I have the opportunity to do so, I would prefer to stay home. I would prefer to do that. I would prefer very much to do that, actually, so I think I will.