I Am Awkward
Try to imagine: one of your close friends … sorry … one of your family members turns 40 years old. He/she/they didn’t want to let that pass in silence, so you’re invited to a party. Of course, you’re not the only one (it wouldn’t be a party at all): the family member invited some close friends: from the neighborhood, from childhood, from a club they attend to together — obviously people who know each other. You might have seen them before, this is not the first party. But you don’t know their names, their hobbies, where they live. The little group is standing in a middle of the room, talking to each other. A beer in their hands, everyone smiling, perhaps laughing. One is telling an anecdote or a joke, which makes the others react. What do you do? Join them? And then — listening? Laughing, too? Participating by saying something?
If you’re like me, you would just stay on a distance. Observe them. Trying to find 500 subjects to talk about. Then throwing all those subjects away — they won’t be interested. You would remember a lot of jokes. And then you’d be thinking: which entry angle could I use to fire one of the jokes? What would happen if they don’t like the joke? What would happen if I begin to stammer? What if I say something wrong? What if they just will stare at me and think: “who the f*** is he?” You’d be finding all the courage to come a bit closer to the group. You might be enter the circle they are standing in. And when the party is over, you will be proud of yourself, that you managed to walk into that circle. Okay, you didn’t say a word. You’d’ve forced yourself to laugh. You’d’ve suppressed yourself to annoy about their use of swear words. They might not have noticed you. But you would be proud of yourself, because you came out of your comfort zone. Sort of.
No, I am not having a social anxiety. I am not a sociopath. I don’t identify myself as somehow autistic. Even though I might have been diagnosed with Asperger, it does not define me. I define myself by the choices I have made: I am the husband of a beautiful wife. I am the proud father of two lovely girls. I am having a couple of companies, all of them I’ve been building up from the bottom. I am a Dane by choice (I moved from The Netherlands, where I was born) to Denmark in 2003. I got rid of a stupid religion. I’ve accepted that some of my family male members couldn’t keep their perverse fingers from me (I mean: I can’t change it, can I?). I became a runner, after being told by my mother, I was handicapped (think that’s called Munchhausen by proxy, but I am not a psychiatrist), I quit smoking without any help (aside from a little book), after I’ve been smoking in nearly 25 years: I have very much I can be proud of. And that defines me.
Still, I don’t like parties. I think they’re boring. Sure, I do love my family, who invite me time after time, to their parties. And it’s not them, whom are boring. I just think I don’t fit in with strangers. But … once my wife was a stranger to me! How did that work out?
Well, easy. I still lived in The Netherlands, and I wanted to learn a new language. Many people in Holland speak English, German and French. Even Spanish and Italian were not unheard. It might have been special if I had learned Chinese, Korean, Japanese or even Russian or Arabic. But still, I had heard about people who could those languages, so I didn’t consider it as exciting. Danish on the other hand, was a language I never heard speaking, until I went on holiday to Denmark. And after that holiday, I never met any Danes. So when I decided to learn a new language, it was a very logical choice: I wanted to learn Danish.
At that time, I was still a Christian. So, I found a Christian chatsite, in Danish (you might imagine, this was in 2002, before Facebook, before Messenger (well, there was MSN Messenger and ICQ, but you needed to know people before connecting), before Snapchat, before Instagram). And I began chatting on that chat site. Very safe, from my own room in my parent’s house in The Netherlands. No stammering that could be heard, no sudden sneezes that would make people look at me, no clothes that wasn’t “in”, no accent and — most important — if I didn’t say anything, it wouldn’t matter. And if I said something: nobody would know who I am: the perfect circumstances.
And on that chatsite, there was a girl, who always said hi, whenever I logged on. Eventually, we began to talk about many things, also in private. To make a long story (a bit) short(er): now, 21 years later, she’s my wife.
In 2003, I moved to Denmark. And what do people do, when they move to another country? They try to mingle with people from the same origin and the same religion. And that’s what I did. Most Dutchmen (not necessarily male) are together with family from The Netherlands. They do speak Dutch at home. I don’t I was the only one from my Dutch family in Denmark, and my wife don’t speak Dutch (or so she says, but I know she does). So we always speak Danish. And when I shook off the idiocy of Christianity, I lost many of my contacts. The only contacts I had left outside my family, were my customers. People who are not interested in Albert, but in that guy who’s fixing their IT problems. People don’t call me to invite me for a cup of coffee, they invite me to get back their lost files, to set up a router, and so on.
And then came Covid-19. Denmark was locked down. I quickly learned I still could help my customers by offering remote support, as well as programming from a distance. It didn’t bother me. I’m fine with working alone, in my office. I hate meetings (remember Mark Zuckerberg in the blockbuster The Social Network — just drawing something on a piece of paper, not taking notice of what is going around? Well, I’m just like that. I don’t care what others are saying on a meeting). I hate sitting in a car, and driving to another location. And I hate cleaning my office, because some could visit me.
Perhaps, I am strange. Or you know what: yes, I am strange. Not even perhaps. But sometimes, I wish I mastered smalltalk. Sometimes, I wish I could tell people all the jokes I know. Sometimes, I like to daydream about standing on a scene, telling people what I know about a subject. And yes, I know a lot about a lot of things. Simply because if I find something, that interests me, I go into that rabbit hole, and I discover a lot. But what would happen, if someone should order me for a lecture about, let’s say, ethical hacking, or stress reducing planning, or deception. And suddenly, I would sneeze in such a way, snot would hang out of my nose. Or I would stammer, and people would just staring at me, with a pitying look out of their eyes. Or I would say the opposite of what I meant. Or I would make a joke and nobody would laugh. Well, it’ll always be a dream. That’s the backside of being awkward.
