Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!husc6!ut-sally!utah-cs!utah-gr!donn From: donn@utah-gr.UUCP (Donn Seeley) Newsgroups: soc.singles Subject: Shyness is more than Powdermilk Biscuits Message-ID: <1802@utah-gr.UUCP> Date: Sun, 21-Sep-86 08:29:50 EDT Article-I.D.: utah-gr.1802 Posted: Sun Sep 21 08:29:50 1986 Date-Received: Tue, 23-Sep-86 02:21:48 EDT References: <911@gilbbs.UUCP> <1142@oliveb.UUCP> <1045@batcomputer.TN.CORNELL.EDU> Organization: University of Utah CS Dept Lines: 121 (... though heavens they're tasty!) Sometimes I feel that maybe we shy persons have borne our terrible burden for far too long. Labeled by society as 'wimps,' 'dorks,' 'creeps,' and 'sissies,' stereotyped as Milquetoasts and Walter Mittys, and tagged as potential psychopaths ('He kept pretty much to himself,' every psychopath's landlady is quoted as saying after the arrest, and for weeks thereafter every shy person is treated like a leper), we shys are desperately misunderstood on every hand. Because we don't 'talk out' our feelings, it is assumed that we haven't any. It is assumed that we never exclaim, retort, or cry out, though naturally we do on occasions when it seems called for. [from 'Shy Rights: Why Not Pretty Soon?' by Garrison Keillor] So why are there so many shys on the net? We've seen at least three postings from shys in the last week, and I'm sure this means that 100 or 20 or even 2 other shys were very glad that someone (else) stepped out of the closet and established that shys could post to this group, provided they were very quiet and polite about it and resolutely limited their follow-ups and didn't say anything someone else would have said better. With great trepidation, I will admit to being shy too, although I'm obviously overcoming it: ten years ago it would never have entered my mind to admit in public that I was the least bit shy. Not that it was a deep dark secret -- anyone who noticed me then would have seen shyness hanging on me like antlers on a moose -- but one of the features of shyness as a neurosis is that it makes it hard to express private feelings to others. What is shyness, anyway? When I was most desperately shy I tended to avoid analyzing the disease. Part of the problem was that I wanted badly to be a very rational person and shyness is so very irrational; I developed elaborate strategies to avoid confronting it. Another part was blaming others for being insensitive, as though shyness were everyone else's problem but my own, and I was capable of working myself into bubbling lathers of self-pity when I seemed to need it. The crisis finally came when I was a junior in college. I was on a rare date with a good woman friend of mine. We'd seen a movie and were wandering across campus toward our dorms when we encountered a huge dorm party in one of the college quads. Hundreds of people were dancing to rock music that was so loud it was barely recognizable and everyone was getting plastered and having a good time. I followed my date into the teeming mass and at some point she met another friend of hers and they melted into the crowd of dancers. When I realized I was alone my hair began to stand up on end like I was in a 10,000 volt electric field. Nothing but strangers all around, all behaving the same, all behaving incomprehensibly (I didn't dance, I didn't drink). Nothing my rational mind could do would stop the tide of panic that swept over me. My lady friend finally found me walking in circles out on the empty basketball courts by the fieldhouse. I guess I had instinctively sought the most vacant space I could get to, a place where strange human beings were far, far away. In retrospect our conversation must have been unintentionally hilarious -- I was shaking with embarrassment, unable to construct a logical sentence but determined to explain that I had had an uncontrollable fit of shyness, while she was concerned that I had seen her with her friend and I might be seething with jealousy... She was the very model of an extrovert and really didn't have any idea what shyness was; she didn't comprehend jealousy from experience, either, but of course she had seen its effects many times and made the reasonable assumption that she was seeing it again. I'm not sure I ever convinced her that the episode wasn't her fault or made her understand what actually happened, but at least I finally understood it myself. (Of course that was our last date, since I had made it abundantly clear that I was a wet. So it goes.) I developed a theory about shyness. Somewhere buried in the depths of the brain, there is an animal with roughly the same intelligence and repertoire of behaviors as a squirrel. Consider the fear of open spaces, technically called 'agoraphobia'. Squirrels have an unreasoning terror of open spaces because all the squirrels who didn't have it became lunch for hawks and didn't reproduce successfully. I think shyness is based on the flight response -- if a squirrel is too close to a coyote, or there are too many coyotes, it will panic and flee. (If this sounds like a rationalization, maybe it is; but it's a useful one.) How does this address the problem of shyness? Well, I figure that you can't teach a squirrel by explaining to it that its flight response is inappropriate. You can, however, train a squirrel: reward it for behaving the right way and eventually it will behave the right way even without the prospect of immediate reward. Some people are shy because their squirrels are less well trained than non-shy people's squirrels. (And I bet y'all didn't think you even owned a squirrel!) So my shyness has abated. Instead of groveling before obnoxious cashiers in lines at the cafeteria, I speak up and tell them that they've overcharged for a medium cup of Coke. Instead of waiting for the next elevator at a hotel when there are more than three people already aboard, I swagger right in and drop my bag firmly on someone's toe. Instead of huddling in a corner near an airport ticket counter trying to decide which line to join, I leap gates like O. J. Simpson. Well, you get the idea...* Now my problem is that all my recreations and entertainments are suited for being alone rather than being social. When I have spare time I read, or play my guitar, or hike, or write. I don't feel any inclination to go to bars, or take aerobics, or visit art show openings, or even go to movies. I haven't had what a reasonable person would call a date since moving to Utah. I really do want to date and I sometimes even enjoy being social, but at the moment I'm not making it happen. I guess I have my work cut out for me... I would have joined Shys Anonymous but their phone was unlisted, Donn Seeley University of Utah CS Dept donn@utah-cs.arpa 40 46' 6"N 111 50' 34"W (801) 581-5668 decvax!utah-cs!donn * The ultimate shy person's wish-fulfillment fantasy can be found in Robert Sheckley's amazing story 'Cordle to Onion to Carrot', which advances the vegetable theory of shyness as opposed to the rodent theory. The story is included in Sheckley's collection CAN YOU FEEL ANYTHING WHEN I DO THIS? -- I suggest that you run out right now to the nearest bookstore and find it, and make sure that you have exact change before you meekly press your cash on that barbaric saleslady.