How to be Socially Awkward in Three Easy Steps

You know how they tell you to socialize your puppy when they are young so that they know how to interact with other dogs and don’t end up becoming one of those crotchety Grandpa dogs that doesn’t know how to act around other living beings? People are a lot like that too. If we don’t learn how to interact with other peoples, we turn into socially awkward weirdos.

Sadly, I am one such weirdo. (Great segue, right? I’m full of ‘em.)

Growing up socially awkward wasn’t hard because that term didn’t really exist then. Or at least it wasn’t as prevalent. When I was growing up they used terms like “loner” or “nerd” and sometimes (for the bus licking strange kids), “freak”. I was the shy, quiet kid (I know, that’s so hard to believe, but it’s 100% true. Ask my mom.) who liked to read books and pretty much be left alone. The basic problem with that though, is that there are no peoples in “alone”. Cue social awkwardness origin story.

If you are also socially awkward, or even if you know someone who is, you know that there are varying degrees of gawky behavior. There’s the foot in mouth syndrome where you channel your inner Yoda and just screw up all the words.

Person- “Have a nice day!”

Me- “Nice day you too!”/Me- “Later talk to you.”/Me- (Garbled response from too many brain synapses running into each other and firing simultaneously) “Urk.”

There’s also the kind where you blurt out extraneous information that no one needs to know but your mouth is a runaway train that jumped off your brain’s track and is going nowhere real fast. I am awesome at this one. I’ll replay that socially inelegant statement back in my head for months thinking, “Gah! I was such an idiot.” (Internal flogging is mandated by all those who are truly socially inept.) Yet that train keeps jumping off track, leaving me with fodder for my continual mental walk of embarrassment. I could give an example here but 1.) It was already a hot mess the first time and doesn’t’ need to be repeated and 2.) If the people who were involved somehow managed to miss the fact that I was an introvert in full mind meltdown, I don’t want to make them aware of it.

A fun variety of social awkwardness is the off brand humor. If you’ve perfected the oddball personality like I have, then you know that you have a unique sense of humor. Unfortunately, “unique sense of humor” sometimes translates into “no one freaking gets your jokes”. Whether it is an obscure literary reference or a nerd culture trivia fact, sometimes funny falls way short of reaching that punchline finish. There have been so many times I have had to stifle the perfect punchline because no one would understand the song lyric or the show reference or the book character quote. It’s hard to have quick wit in those instances where you have nowhere to throw that pitch. (My advice for this is to marry someone with the same sense of humor as you. This means you’re only losing half of your best material.)

Luckily, this societal ineptitude doesn’t have to be genetic. (In full disclosure, I am not a geneticist. You really can’t take my word on this. It may, in fact, be 100% genetic and I am thereby having a moment of awkward foot-in-mouth-syndrome at this precise moment. ) My 12 year old son comes from a socially gawky mom and a socially talented dad. So far he seems to be leaning towards his father’s community chat-ability. (Conversely, the five year old is a hermit that enjoys staying home, wearing pajamas, and snacks. So I guess you can take your pick on the genetics theory thing.)

If you or your offspring are in the socially awkward club, don’t lose all hope. There is a chance (albeit probably very slight) that social awkwardness can be, well, not cured so much as overcome. Eh, even overcome is still not quite the right terminology. Perhaps re-training your brain to recognize non-verbal cues in conjunction to societal norms would be a better phrasing. (If not better, it sure sounds like you know what you’re talking about, right?) The more you socialize, the more practice you have at removing that foot from your mouth until one day, maybe you don’t even need to mentally castigate yourself after an outing. Okay, so that might be a stretch, but it will definitely diminish over time. Constant exposure to people at gatherings and parties will mean that you can learn to have a conversation with someone that comes eerily close to almost normal. If I can do it, so can too you do it. 

Aw, crap.  And I was so close too.

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