Today we attended a two year-old’s birthday party. It was awesome to see some friends I haven’t been able to hang out with since I went back to work. We keep up on Facebook, but IRL (in real life) is so much nicer. I mean, with these people it is. I love Facebook mostly because it means I never have to see people, but I still get to pretend I have “relationships.”
Which got me thinking about the introvert/extrovert thing. I’ve always considered myself the latter. I talk to people easily. I like being the center of attention in a crowd, as long as it’s not because I just jammed my foot in my mouth. Hell, I became a teacher, which puts me “on stage” from 8 a.m. to 12:21 p.m. every day, at which time I convene to the “round table” in the teachers’ cafeteria to grab the spotlight some more. There’s much more competition there, though. I think most teachers are spotlight grabbers. Why else would we choose to do what amounts to daily public speaking engagements? Oh, right, I almost forgot. It’s the huge salary for part-time work that attracts us. (Hey, Dr. Keith, go “ablow” yourself!)
Disclaimer: when you look at the hours I just quoted, you may think “That sounds pretty ‘part-time’ to me.” I actually DO work part-time, and get paid accordingly. But I almost never leave work before 4:00, because I hate to take work home. I never do the work. I take it home, but it basically just gets a ride in the car and then a quiet evening in my bag in front of the TV. I’ve taken my work on lots of vacations, too. My work has been to Hawaii, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Washington. It’s well-traveled work.
Even before I took this job, I felt at home in front of an audience. Jerry Seinfeld once joked that people fear public speaking more than death, so at a funeral, they’d rather be the guy in the coffin than the one giving the eulogy. Not true for me. And I’m the one who makes a few well-timed (in my opinion) wise cracks at faculty meetings and staff developments too.
Odie is the opposite. He is at ease in front of a classroom, but he despises social situations. Today, he was so grateful that I told him he should stay home from the party. He has a hard enough time making small talk with people he knows well, and he always leaves convinced that he made everyone feel uncomfortable and they all hate him. All of our post-party drives home consist of Odie deconstructing the evening, usually by beginning with “I don’t think X Person likes me.”
He would have smiled and made nice conversation and played with the kids, but inside, he would have been struggling. I don’t want my husband to struggle on a Saturday morning. I want him to relax from a long week at a difficult job. I teach English to immigrants, which is a real-life skill they can take directly from the classroom and use. And they STILL aren’t interested. Imagine how those teenagers feel about advanced math. Let me put it this way, how do YOU feel about advanced math? Exactly.
And if he ended up feeling like cleaning the kitchen because he was so grateful. Who am I to complain?
Odie is an introvert and I am an extrovert, but we’re both isolaters. It makes us fantastic homebodies. Although, I suspect that most people become homebodies when they have kids and they like their homes. Right now, I’m sitting in my chair that Odie has dubbed “The Throne” and he is on the couch next to me. We are both on our laptops in the dark, the soft bluish glows illuminating our faces. I glance every thirty seconds or so at the video baby monitor to see V tossing and turning but staying asleep (too much cake and ice cream today, probably). Together, but in our own little worlds, alone together.
Being with people today filled up my extrovert cup, left me satisfied and ready to be alone. V has a book called “One, Two, Three,” by Sandra Boynton, and the last line is “And one is wonderful after a crowd.” She’s a philosopher, that Boynton, because it really is true(and because piggies were born to be chubby and pink). And I think that in a solid, working relationship, you do feel comfortable being “alone together.”
Especially since I know that if I flashed him my boobies, there’d be all kinds of togetherness.
The Friendly Pedant by Mrs. Odie 
A Romantic Diversion
This time of year always reminds me of lust. Eight years ago, my friendly relationship with a coworker took a lascivious turn. It began with flirtation, moved to kissing, escalated to cohabitation, progressed to marriage, and is currently experiencing early parenthood. The parenthood part has greatly reduced the kissing part. Early summer of 2003, though, was the delightful kissing phase. I’ll never forget the first one. Odie turned to me, and said with great urgency, “I HAVE to kiss you.” And I dissolved into a puddle of clichéd romantic comedy heroine. Half an hour later, I was at Toxic Best Friend’s apartment, pacing and giggling, trying in vain to explain what I was feeling. She would have none of my excitement. Details she wanted, yes, but only to pick apart the experience and convince me that he was using me, exploiting me, and would ultimately break my heart. It was not love, she told me, rubbing the tiny pregnant belly of her most recent affair. Now THAT was the real thing, she assured me.
Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.
Do you remember that feeling of summer coming when you were still in high school? The end of every class period brought you closer to summer vacation. And if you could speed that class period to an end faster by sleeping, all the better. Well, if you’re one of my students, that seems to be your strategy. At my high school, the hallways are all outdoors, so when you step out of our classrooms that are stuffy with apathy and body odor, you catch an early May breeze blowing through the corridor. Even teachers are deeply affected by the pull of what that breeze promises.
Vacation. Vacation is coming.
At the end of every class period, there is a jarring bell sound through the P.A. system. It used to be a delightful chime. “Ding, dong, DING!” it murmured to us, “Class is over!” Now it blares this grating “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.” Eight years ago, at the end of class one day, instead of a jarring bell or a delightful chime, the opening riff of John Mayer’s “Your Body is a Wonderland,” the acoustic version, came over the speakers, and the powers that control bells let the whole song play through the passing period. I’ll never know why or how that happened, but I was overcome with feeling. I was deeply in the infatuation phase of love and it was everything I could do to keep my mind on my job. The ceiling of my classroom was the floor of his.
Recently, my students started reading a book that is about a “picture bride” who comes to America from Japan in the 20th century to marry a man she has never met. The students couldn’t fathom the idea of an “arranged marriage,” so I talked to them about how recent and “Western” the concept of “marrying for love” is. Then I actually said that thing adults said to me when I was a teenager, utterly depressing me. “That infatuation feeling doesn’t last. It’s not a good thing to base a marriage on.”
Because partly, it isn’t true. I mean, I must admit “infatuation” isn’t the word that jumps to mind when Odie is telling me about his terrible gas pains. But that fart cuts both ways. You don’t know how much wedding vows matter until you have to live with a seven months pregnant woman’s bodily complaints. And then with a postpartum depression woman. Nevertheless, when the weather turns from spring to summer (it DOES happen in Southern California, no matter what you’ve heard), when John Mayer’s music comes on the radio, when Odie stops me in the middle of the morning rush out the door and says, “Stop a minute. I have to kiss you,” the infatuation most assuredly lasts.
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