Telephone

I've never been good at the whole "telephone" thing. I think that you develop a lot of your phone habits when you're in junior high. If you talk a lot then, you probably will be a lifelong phone chatter. If you mostly write notes, you'll probably be more into emails and texting. If you are reserved and don't do much of either, you will find it hard to use those avenues of communication once you are older.

In junior high, I was a bit of an outcast. Because I skipped a grade, I was always a year or two younger than all my peers. I was also labeled as a "nerd" because I liked to read and knew big words. We were pretty poor, so I never had cool clothes or the latest fad. I kind of had friends, but I was never really close to any of the cool girls. Whenever I tried to talk to them, I was always told that I was "too young" to hear their conversations.

Basically, I was unimportant until someone wanted something, which they rarely did. I would try to get someone's attention, even my mother's at a very young age, and end up being granted only a few moments audience with them. As a result, I am a VERY fast talker!

Due to all this, I hardly talked on the phone. Written notes were my preferred method of communication. I was me even that far back, so as you can probably imagine, I was a fan of the intricately folded ones especially. I've also always been better at writing than speaking.

I never called anyone because I didn't think they would want to talk to me. They didn't in real life, why would they want to talk to me on the phone? I'm afraid this fear of rejection has carried over into my adult life, because I just don't like to call anyone on the phone. I keep thinking to myself, Oh, they may be busy, or they may be cooking dinner, or they may be eating, or they may be watching Lost, or they may have gone to bed early... you get the idea. It just ends up being me waiting for a better time to call, and that better time never coming. It's so much easier to send an email that they can read when they have time and I don't have to worry about bothering them.

I live in FEAR of bothering people. I don't like when people are annoyed with me, and it feels like I annoy people all the time. I go out of my way to be self sufficient, and to make sure that I fully understand anything that is asked of me so that I don't annoy people when I mess up. I don't want to mess up! I know, have anxiety much?

I wish I didn't have to worry about this. I wish I was the sort of person that other people enjoyed hearing from. I'm thirty two years old but on the inside I still feel like that ten year old pest who can't do anything right and is hopelessly uncool.