On Saturday night, after we'd gone to a party celebrating a friend's wedding, Kendell and I sat down to watch Survivor. (YAY for DVRs!) As we watched this week's scapegoat leaving, Kendell said "Survivor is just like high school," and his words were so close to what I'd been thinking and feeling since leaving that party that I wondered, for a second, if he had been reading my mind.
I'm not a very social person---if there were a test for mingling, I'd definitely fail. I'm horrible at striking up conversation with people I don't know, and no matter how friendly unknown people at parties are, I never really feel very comfortable. The party we went to was to celebrate our friend Steve's second marriage. They got married somewhere else, and are living in southern Utah, so this was just a small party for people around here---twenty or so. The food was amazing---pulled pork and rice cooked with coconut milk. They had it at the gorgeous house of one of their friends, and had Hawaiian decorations everywhere. Everyone was friendly.
But that was the most painful night I can remember having in a long time.
Aside from Steve and his new wife, we knew no one. Now, Kendell is great in situations like these. He makes friends where ever he goes, so this was no big deal for him. For me, it was torture. All of the women there were gorgeous---blond and skinny and just cute. With obviously no social problems like I have. They chatted and laughed and touched each other's arms as if they were all long-lost friends. It didn't help that the attire was also Hawaiian. They all had cute little plumeria-printed skirts and coconut shells; my "Hawaiian attire" is the mu mu I bought when we went there in 1997, when I was just pregnant with Jake and thought a big comfy mu mu would be a nice end-of-pregnancy addition.
So there's me, smiling one of those fake, forced smiles, eating fruit off paper-pineapple-topped toothpicks in my gargantuan, bright-pink mu mu, feeling like a big looser watching all those gorgeous, blond, outgoing women laugh. Kendell kept raising his eyebrows at me, signaling me to go over and get in the mix. But I just couldn't---what would I say? And just as my self-incrimination started, I had this thought:
This is just like high school.
Before I go on, I should say this. I don't think that the labels that we apply to ourselves (or are applied for us) when we're teenagers are things that necessarily stick through our entire lives. I'd like to think that, say, the cheerleaders I alternately detested and envied when I was a teenager are now kind members of society. They probably are. If I look at my own life, at the woman I am right now, I can't help laughing at what my adolescent self would think of me. She'd be shocked and disgusted and the absolute ordinariness of my life. I got chubby. I wear colors (not just black). And I've not yet managed to write something that would change the world. I'm just an average stay-at-home mom. Adolescent Amy would definitely be shocked.
So we don't have to stick with those high-school labels. But as I listened to the women at the party laugh together, it did feel a little bit like being back in high school---being the quiet, mousy, shy girl. No, I guess I should say it felt like junior high school, because by the time I got to 10th grade, I'd found my way to deal with my shyness: black clothes, steel-toed boots and a spiky attitude. Superiority in the face of popularity---being different as a form of protection. The slings and arrows of golden, outgoing girls bounced right off my cynicism and annoyance.
I've thought a lot, since leaving adolescence, about why I was the goth girl I was in high school. There are many reasons. But I'd never really seen it as a form of protection until that party last Saturday. I'd have felt so much better if I'd just not had that bright mu mu on---if I'd worn something black I'd have felt less vulnerable. Of course, it was silly to feel vulnerable in the first place; they really were nice women. But with whatever accomplishments I've made in my life, in whatever ways I've cast off adolescent labels, the one that's stuck tight is that social awkwardness. Probably I never will get it off.
I did survive the party. We played a fun game---Cranium Pop 5 ---and I managed to hold my own without blushing too badly. But I was so glad when Haley called and needed my help with Kaleb so we could leave. And as I continue thinking about this experience, I am left wondering if anyone else ever feels this way. Am I the only fairly-competent member of society who sucks at mingling? I mean, really: throw me in front of an audience of five hundred people and tell me to teach them something, and I'd have the time of my life. But drop me into an intimate party and tell me to mingle---wearing a big mu mu? I think I'd rather have my toenails yanked off. I know this struggle is a contradiction. But really: I have no idea how to fix it.
Other than to always wear black to parties. And to bury that mu mu in the back of my closet.