Shut Up, Shut Up, SHUT UP!

Random gripe of the day:

When I eat lunch at work, I usually read.  I love reading, but often I only get about three pages read during my lunch hour.

Here’s what happens:  I sit down to read.  Three minutes later, someone will walk into the break room to get coffee.  They’ll talk to me the entire time, because humans are basically gibbering monkeys that are afraid their jaws will atrophy if they aren’t constantly making noise.  Okay, more realistically, they think it will be rude to walk by me without saying hello.  A note to such humans:  It is rude to speak to someone who is obviously reading.  But the way they figure it, they’re only taking three minutes out of my day, and that’s not enough to really interrupt my reading.  What they don’t seem to get is, thirty seconds after they walk out of the break room, someone else walks in the process starts all over.  My entire lunch hour ends up spent making small talk with twenty different coworkers, each of whom thinks they’re the only one I’ve spoken to all hour.

So, I started wearing earphones.  I can’t listen to music with lyrics while I read, but that’s fine, I have plenty of MP3s of instrumental music.  Movie soundtracks are my favorite, especially Danny Elfman.  Sometimes I’ll match the music to the fiction, like listening to John Williams while reading Star Wars novels.  I even listen to nature MP3s, like crashing waves  or thunderstorms, just to drown out my coworkers.  Once or twice I’ve forgotten my phone, and still wore the earphones to keep people from talking to me.  Yes, I’m antisocial, I’ll cop to that.  But I also just have different ideas about what should be considered rude.

The earphones/book combo keeps about half the employees from talking to me.  Some of them even look a little relieved, like “Good, he has earphones on, I don’t have to make small talk.”  Well, if you didn’t want to make small talk, why did you do it before?  Because for some reason you thought it would be rude to ignore someone who might as well be wearing a “Do Not Disturb” sign?  I swear, our society has issues.  Anyway, as I was saying, earphones+book stops half the yakkers.  But the other half just greet me louder.  “HI MATT, HOW ARE YOU DOING?  IS YOUR WIFE DOING OKAY?  HOW’S THE CAR?  DID YOU WATCH THAT SPORTSBALL GAME LAST NIGHT?  MY KID JUST TURNED THREE, ISN’T THAT GREAT?”  Oh, thank goodness you came along.  I’ve been dying to speak to someone, but I accidentally got these earphones stuck in my ears.  I’ve been waiting all lunch hour for someone loud enough to talk to over my music.

This is why I prefer to eat lunch in my car, but that’s only feasible for about half the year.

Look, let me make this clear for those in the back:

It is not rude to ignore someone who obviously wants to be ignored.

It is rude to interrupt someone who is reading.

It is rude to engage someone who is listening to earphones.

If someone is both wearing earphones and reading, it is a clear sign that they do not want your attention.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a coworker in the break room, or a single woman on a bus, these are signs that the person doesn’t want to be disturbed.  Like a rattlesnake’s rattle, or the quills on a porcupine, this is how nature says “Go Away.”  It’s not a secret, it’s blatantly obvious, and if you don’t pick up on these signals, you’re an idiot.  Just.  Shut.  Up.

You would think it gets better when two coworkers come into the break room at once, because they’ll talk to each other.  But people are just loud in general.  They’ll stand right next to each other and shout loud enough to hear across the building.  They’re not angry, they’re not arguing, this just seems to be how people speak when they’re happy.  I can turn my music up until my ears hurt, and I’ll still hear them over it.  Heck, it’s not just in the break room.  When I’m working at my desk, I can hear every single word of three distinct conversations, all from different directions, each over 50 feet away, sometimes in offices with closed doors.  Seriously, why do people shout at each other when they’re standing three feet apart?  Indoor voices, people!  And don’t get me started on people who insist on using speakerphones.

Another weird phenomenon I’ve noticed:  When an employee gets a personal call on his cell phone, he will walk somewhere else to have a more private conversation.  Makes sense.  Except, he won’t actually go somewhere that doesn’t have people, all that matters to him is getting away from his own department.  So he’ll walk away from one group of people, only to disturb a different group of people.  Apparently it’s socially acceptable to annoy your coworkers as long as they’re not the ones you specifically have to work with.  For some reason, my cubicle wall seems to be the popular hangout for other departments to make private cell phone calls.

*Sigh*  At least I know I’m not going deaf.

A Random Memory

The management of this theater, in cooperation with the Tennessee State Fire Marshal’s office, requests that you take a moment to look around the theater and familiarize yourself with the location of all emergency exits.

The aisle ways in which you entered, and the passageways, designated by the illuminated Emergency Exit signs, visible to you at either the right or left of the forward section, have been checked and are clear exits from the building in the event of an emergency.

Thank you for your time and attention.

That’s one of the first things I ever memorized.  I probably knew it by heart before I learned any Bible verses or even the Pledge of Allegiance.  I’m not sure if that says something about our society, but I’m not trying to make any sort of statement.  I just thought it was funny that I still remember it; that version hasn’t been in use for years.

Perception

My brain doesn’t work right.  I have trouble communicating with other human beings.  I perceive the world differently than most people.  Or maybe everyone feels like that, but I don’t hear them talk about it.

I don’t enjoy discussing my hobbies.  “Riiiight,” you say, having read my past blogs.  But it’s true.  I like lecturing about my hobbies, but not really discussing them.  I’ll write long-winded blogs, or have mostly one-sided conversations, but I have difficulty engaging in two-way dialogue about activities I love.  On some level, I view all conversations as instructive.  If the other person knows more about the subject than I do, there’s no point in me speaking except to ask questions.  If the other person knows less than I do, then I have the compulsion to share all my knowledge to the point that they can’t get a word in edgewise.  It’s not healthy, and I don’t know how other people enjoy two-way conversations on a more equal basis.  I’m afraid I might be alienating people, alternating between being too quiet and being a know-it-all.

When I play D&D, I take notes so I can post session recaps on my blog.  But multiple players have told me that I always get the details wrong.  This bothers me because I’m writing down what happens as it comes out of the DM’s mouth.  Sometimes I even read the published module to confirm some of the events (I never read past our current spot, scout’s honor).  If my memory and another player’s memory disagree, it seems like mine would be the right one; I have the notes to back it up.  But even the DM has said to me, “I always love reading your blog the next day so I can see your version of events.  I’ll read it and be like, ‘That’s what happened?  Cool!’”  He’s nice about it, even complimentary – “That’s way more exciting than the way I remember running it” kind of thing.  But you don’t know how frustrating it is that I take all these measures and still get the details wrong.

I know part of it is that I don’t always catch sarcasm.  If a player asks if the vampires we’re fighting sparkle, and the DM says “Yeah, sure,” then guess what’s going in the blog.  This is made worse by the fact that, in my experience, D&D players tend to be unusually sarcastic people.  Some of this would be rectified if I interacted with people more.  I would eventually get used to all the verbal inflections that indicate sarcasm.  But in-person social interaction gives me anxiety, and being around too many humans makes me tired.

I’m also not good at reading between the lines.  Some DMs will describe exactly what we see, but let us draw our own conclusions about what it means.  Sometimes it’s intentionally obvious that A+B=C, but I still end up with W.  If the DM describes a fountain surrounded by corpses, I’ll be the one assuming that the water tastes so good, even the dead want to try it.  If our characters find themselves locked in a room while a two-headed ogre bangs on the door, I’ll be the one asking if we should let him in, because maybe the two-headed ogre is in trouble and needs our help.

I recently realized that I had a major misconception about a plot point in Avengers: Infinity War.  Gamora says something along the lines of, “I found the map to the Soul Stone, and I burned it to ash.”  I always interpreted “it” to mean the stone, not the map.  Meaning she destroyed the stone.  And that’s why Thanos had to sacrifice her to get the stone back, because that’s how you reforge an Infinity Stone that’s been destroyed.  And being the Soul Stone, it requires the soul of a living being to be recreated.  I talked about the scene to several people and in a couple of blogs, speaking as if everyone shared my interpretation of the scene, because I had no reason to believe differently.

But that’s not what happened.  She burned the map to ash, so Thanos needed her memory to guide him to the stone, and the only reason he has to sacrifice her is because (as Red Skull explains if I would just listen) obtaining the Soul Stone works differently than the other stones.  Honestly, I like my version better, but I’m still embarrassed by my misconception.  And I have these misinterpretations All. The. Time.  I know I’m not the only one to make these mistakes, but they just seem to happen more to me than anyone else I know.

I don’t know where to go from here.  I don’t feel like an adult, but a lot of people say that.  Sometimes I wonder if I’m actually mentally handicapped, and the rest of the world is just humoring me.  I’d think I have Imposter Syndrome, except those are people who don’t believe they deserve their accomplishments.  I have no accomplishments, so I can’t say I don’t deserve them.

This Might Not Have Actually Happened

About 25 years ago, when I first got my driver's license, I got stuck trying to make a left turn at a traffic light.  This light didn't have a left arrow, and there was an infinite stream of cars I needed to turn through.  I sat through several cycles waiting for an opportunity to turn.  I couldn't even change my mind at that point, because the traffic to my right was also bumper to bumper.

I thought I'd be stuck there forever.  In fact, I'm still there right now.  The first few years were especially difficult.  Pizza places can be iffy about delivering to cars stuck in traffic, but if you tip them enough they get over it.  And then Uber Eats came along, and I found I could get all the comforts of home shipped to my car.

Life could be worse.