Stealth in Spontaneity

The title of this post is a joke on myself. I’m the last person in the world who is suave and composed when it comes to being spontaneous. I always got the drop in my stomach during my school years whenever the teacher would calmly announce, “Now, I want you guys to pair off” or “Everyone should work together in small groups, choose your partners yourselves.” My internal voice would be screaming the word WHYYYY. My default at the time was to sit rigidly in my seat and make myself look as small as possible, unable to make a move towards any of my classmates or even try to ask someone if they would partner up with me. I didn’t bail out every time there was group work. Sometimes I did out of convenience because I didn’t know how to push myself to react ASAP to the sudden change in the situation which was causing me so much distress.

As an adult, the distress has stayed with me but manifested in different ways that prove I am still somewhere on the spectrum of anxious, socially anxious, and socially awkward all rolled up into one. I cannot pinpoint which of the three it really is because for a lot of situations I feel a mixture of all three.

Still, when strangers talk to me, I find that I typically go for the shortest answer possible that I can give. I definitely don’t do it to be rude or standoffish but I have a feeling I may have come across that way. There was a good number of years during adolescence where I hardly spoke and it became difficult for me to respond verbally when spoken to without getting overly anxious. It took me another good number of years to move on from that in my own way, which included an amateur method of preparing answers in advance to simple questions so I could have default answers to save myself. Questions like, “How are you?” or “How are you doing?” or “Do you need help?” Me: “I’m fine.” “I’m good.” “No, I’m okay.” “No, I’m doing all right so far.”

The bad part is that a lot of times when I utilized these answers, especially during those struggling years where I had to force myself to speak verbally, it was like dragging nails on a chalkboard. I hated the sound of my own voice. Thus, I would speak very fast, sometimes accidentally slurring my words together with barely any pauses in between. This would cause the other person not to hear me clearly so I would have to repeat myself.

I feel semi-natural when I respond with an answer that isn’t too long. I live in the city, so a question like, “How are you?” from a stranger doesn’t seem like an open-ended one that requires a meaningful answer from me, anyway. So I am fine with that, but there are moments I overthink. Once, I was next in line and observed a customer in front of me having lively banter with the barista that went beyond the usual pleasantries. Suddenly I was self-conscious of what little I had to offer in conversation. I am not a person who can chat with a stranger or crack a joke to break the ice. I would be too scared to try even though I long for that kind of connection no matter how brief it would be.

All the time in stores, I answer the employee’s inquiry of, “Do you need help?” with the practiced, “Oh no, I’m just looking.” I habitually find myself spitting that sentence out like an autoreply message even during times I actually do need help locating an item in a store. I never rectify the error either. Technically I could say, “Actually, nevermind, I do. Can you help me find ____?” but by the time my brain catches up with my mouth, I think, Too late, dummy.

My problem is I would indeed like to be more spontaneous with my answers but I rely heavily on my prepared responses or I go for the first one I can think of in my panic-induced state of, Hurry up and say something back. I’m always afraid of leaving people hanging. Then when I do leave people hanging, it takes me several more seconds to process what I just said and realize I could have said xyz instead. Commence the internal headdesk (if you don’t know what I mean, Google will tell you).

Yesterday I was browsing a row of women’s blazers that were hung up high on a wall rack. I was engrossed in trying to find one in my size that at first I didn’t hear someone asking in a loud tone, “Excuse me, what are you looking for? Hello? What are you looking for?” Her voice and manner of speech were a bit intimidating so when I finally poked my head out to face her, I timidly told her I was searching for a blazer in a size small. She used a long hook to reach up to flip through the rack until she pulled down one for me. I thanked her and began walking off. She pointed me to the fitting room and asked me to bring back the outfit if I didn’t want it. Her voice was at a normal speaking volume by this point but I still felt iffy about her because of the sharp tone of how she had initially spoken to me. I chalked it up to her accent, which to my ears sounded very European, perhaps Russian. When I finished trying on the blazer, I left it on a rack there in the room instead of putting it back in the section where I originally got it from. Then I deliberately walked the other way to get to the upstairs portion of the store as an added measure to ensure I wouldn’t run into the woman again.

As luck would have it, I did see her upstairs. A brand of water bottles for both hot and cold water caught my attention, which is totally beside the point of this story, but I was so busy looking at it that again she caught me off-guard. I heard the question, “Miss, did you take the outfit?” Two seconds later I realized I was being spoken to and peered around to see her standing there. She had a slight inviting smile on her face. That was disarming to me because she certainly did not give off a sunny disposition earlier. Did I misjudge her? Fiddling with the water bottle lid, I said, “Oh, um, no.” She asked where I put it and I told her it was on the dressing rack. The answer satisfied her and she turned to go around the corner.

I was thinking of two things in that instance as the conversation ended. First was that I thought my way of answering her was a kinda cold. Like how I tend to shoot first and take seconds longer to think about what I just said, the thought crossed my mind that I could have told her I tried on the outfit but that it was too big for me. Except I didn’t think of that until that very moment after she stopped talking to me. Ugh! The second thought I had was, I didn’t even put the outfit back where she asked me to place it back if I didn’t want it, which was accompanied by a tinge of guilt. I had been anticipating her anger over me ignoring her instructions, but I only realized long after she walked away that the fact I said “dressing rack” did not exclusively mean the rack in the dressing room, so she probably assumed I meant the rack she originally pulled the outfit from.

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Featured Image by Steve Johnson.