Unsocial

Not sure when I started to read Capri’s Doodle, wandering thoughts of a Vietnamese-American blogger, but her witty Vietnamese and hilarious posts always crack me the hell up. Her latest post on unsocial strikes my chord. Like her, I am not the social type. I actually put more of my thoughts on this site than when I talk to people. With the web site people have the choice. They can read it or they don’t. In a face-to-face conversation I feel like I am forcing them to listen to the stories that have no absolute interest to them. My wife is the only the exception. She has no choice. Except for her, no one gives a rat-ass interest about my interests. So I just stick to the general questions, which sometimes sounded like I was desperate trying to be social.

I could still remember the embarrassing moment of me trying to get my social skills on. It was Vassar’s Christmas party for all the faculties, administrators and staffs. The place was huge and filled with people chitchatting and some relaxing swing jazz music. I met a French professor who I worked with on the French web site when I started working for Vassar. From what I remembered about her from our previous work-related conversations was that she goes to France every summer. So after our initial greetings, I asked her “How was France?” With a glass of wine in her hand she replied, “Oh, no thanks.” I just smiled and didn’t know what else to say. In an awkward moment, I followed up with an awkward question, “I thought you go to France every year.” Her response was, “Oh, I thought you asked me to dance.” The music was nice and everything but I was not about to make a fool out of myself in a work environment. Besides no one was dancing out there and the place wasn’t set up for that either. The good thing was that we both laughed about it. I was going to say, “You must have had a bit too much wine,” but didn’t want to offend her.

Come to think about, what if she was the bold and carefree type of person who wasn’t embarrassed by such an out-of-place offer? What if she said yes and then I was like, “oh no, that was not what I meant.” I guess it was better for me to feel embarrassed than for her. I was still puzzling though. How did she hear “How was France?” into “Would you like to dance?” I guess dance and France sound pretty close and my wonderful accent makes them indistinguishable.