The Rules Of Social Engagement
The Rules Of Social Engagement And How I Tend To Royally Fuck Them Up
When you were a little kid, you went to school and camp. You sat by the boy who played with Devil Stix and you ate lunch with
the girl who had vegan copies of everything you were eating. You were jealous because her food bounced when she dropped it.
You got invited to birthday parties and even if the kid was the girl who shot Jello out of her nose that one time or the boy
who liked to interrupt your conversations with "jinx!", you went because the person (or his or her parents) was nice enough
to invite you. You got them a piggy bank, a joke book, a gift certificate to Newbury Comics, a life sized plastic penguin.
Maybe as they got older, they got a personalized journal, a Barnes and Noble gift card, a remote control fart machine. Even
if the kid was weird, you went to their parties. You had fun.
You got older and birthday parties became a thing of the past. For whatever reason, you and your friends went to different
schools. Some stayed local, some went out of town, some boarded out of state, some you never heard from again. The good times
dried up, but they weren't forgotten. Not by them, but especially not by you.
You came home from college. Some friends finishing, some just beginning and you, somewhere in between, closer to the end than
the start. Things will never be the same. Tragedy has hit some; they have lost jobs, lost lovers, lost parents, lost best
friends. Joy has shined on others; new friends, new jobs, new paths. They have been shaped.
You were all your individual colors of play-dough neatly packaged; you were friends because you were packaged the same;
taking the same classes, going to the same school or the same camp. Unmolded, you fit in the little jars and happily stood
side by side. Now some of you are green dinosaurs; you do not fit the jar. Some of you are red apples; you do not fit the
jar. Some of you are blue oceans; you do not fit the jar. You could if you squeezed in, since you did not add any dough, but
you'd lose your shape and you like being the dinosaur with the job, the apple with the boyfriend, the ocean with the future.
But one night in the jar wouldn't hurt. To remember what it was like to have the inside jokes; to be the people who smelled
the people who smelled the clouds, to lose the shape of the person who lost touch and let your colors run together. Shape a
castle with a blue moat, a green dragon, an orange princess (Lindsay Lohan?) with red hair, gray walls and little pink
flowers. Be something together.
There always will be someone who wants the castle around them. Maybe it is the orange princess who needs stability. Maybe it
is the green dragon who wants to guard something. Maybe it's the moat, happy just to go around, or the flowers wanting to
keep everything bright. But someone, somewhere, wants those little blobs of clay so beautifully unshaped in their heyday to
come together again.
For some reason, I take things very literally and to heart, and when I was little and protested that I didn't want to go to
so and so's party because I didn't want to bowl, they were having a clambake (and clams make me die) or perhaps I just wasn't
fond of little so-and-so, I was told that unless I had a reason like a family vacation, bad timing or work (not an issue at
age seven), I should go to the party because so and so was nice enough to invite me. And to this day, that has stuck with me.
Most of my friends are too old for "parties for a reason" and I tend to avoid parties "for no reason" because, for one, I am
not invited and secondly, I'm not a fan of the whole loud music and intoxication scene. But if someone was nice enough to
invite me, I would obviously go, because so and so was nice enough to invite me.
But sometimes you invite so and so, and what's her face, and that kid, and good ol' that guy to your party, and ten or
fifteen other people. So and So has a waitress shift, so she's out. That Kid is still abroad in Prague or something, so he's
out. Good Ol' That Guy's good ol' grandpa just died, so it's OK if he doesn't come. But What's Her Face does not have work,
and she's not in Prague, and her grandparents are in Vegas winning Blackjack. She drives, knows where your house is, and even
Facebooks you occasionally, but she "doesn't feel like going." Five of the ten or fifteen give some vague answer to why
they're not coming, two say they're coming but don't show, and the rest never even RSVP. Later, you find out that people
don't want to go because they like too much being the dinosaur, the apple, the flowers, the ocean and they want so hard to
forget that they were ever beautiful unshaped clay, or they have already forgotten and feel it is strange to return for a
night to the happy place. Perhaps for them, it wasn't even the happy place, but back then, when they were all in jars, they
tried to make it so and it wasn't until after they had been shaped that they could reflect.
I'm the epitome of Hebrew School Dropout and lost my faith at eleven, but I still remember Genesis and how, at least in the
Bible if not in reality, God sculpted the first man from, you guessed it, clay. So in a way, even if you don't believe in God
or the Bible because frankly, I have many a doubt, we are still all clay. Death, birth, love, hate, puppies, college, moms,
dads, families, cats, lizards, Chinese food, Facebook, HBO... everything we let into our lives shapes us and that's OK. We
need to let ourselves be shaped as well as shape ourselves. But we can't let ourselves get shaped into something that forgets
what we had and what we were (unless what we had was a bad rash and what we were was a toolbag).
So unless somebody did something to really hurt you, if they want to be part of your life, let them. We live in a society now
where we live most of our lives through technology and unfortunately that tends to affect our lives offline. You can block
people on AIM and Facebook, but you can't block them in life. You can remove someone from your buddy list, but they don't
vaporize in their chair the second you do. They are still there, wondering what they did, or if they know what they did, not
knowing how to fix it, and technology encourages this. I saw a cell phone ad today with a test on it and one of the questions
was what to do if someone calls and you don't answer and they call again. The "answer" was to "avoid them because they are
desperate for human interaction." I think that is disgusting. Whatever happened to reaching out? If someone is desperate for
human interaction, you give them the human interaction before they do something drastic like hurt themselves, dress up in
mall goth clothing or write really shitty poetry, not isolate them even more! We can't all be the person people want to talk
to all the time!
I have people on my facebook friends list who I have not spoken to in fifteen years. I have people on my facebook friends
list who I admired in high school but I was too afraid to say so. I have people on my friends list who know something I
don't, and people who don't know things that I do. I have people on my facebook who have tried to speak for others or gotten
involved in things that ended up poorly for everyone except perhaps them. There are people who have done things that unless
they can help undo them, I don't think I will ever forgive. Yet I don't unfriend them, online or even in life. Because even
though in some cases I've dealt with people who aren't completely neutral in a conflict or not completely tight-lipped, I CAN
BE. I have withheld secrets I probably shouldn't have withheld (not my own secrets) not because of fear but because for the
few minutes they were shared with me, I felt respected and trusted and I wanted to give those people the same respect and
trust they had given me.
As I said in my comedy routine, "I try not to complain too much about love, because, really, I love love. And I love people,
and I also love aquariums." But as love can often be cruel and aquariums can often be full of sharks and nippy penguins,
people can be frightening. And I haven't been as good of a friend as I would have liked to be, because like sharks and nippy
penguins, I fear people. And perhaps it is my years as the moat or the flowers with no castle to circle, but I feel like I
have lost my people skills. And sometimes a simple "Hi" from me makes people sign off or even block me. It's like they just
needed to know I wasn't dead before they shut me out completely. I'm not interested in a big political discussion; I won't
unload the woes of a long-distance relationship on you if you don't want. I just want to say hi, and I feel like it's not OK
to do that anymore.
So, in short, the things I don't understand:
1) Avoiding interaction with old friends because "we've changed,"
2) The whole concept of shutting people out of your life especially if they feel positive about you, and
3) Crocs.