give me strength

I want to talk about two things that I do all the time that are really, really embarrassing.

They are:
1. Respond to people who I think are talking to me but really they are talking to somebody else on their cell phone.

2. In front of another person, say something to a third person who doesn't hear it or respond in any way. (E.g., I am person A. Person B is beside me. I say something to person C but person C doesn't hear me. Person B watches person C not respond to me.)

The first one just happened to me again about 5 minutes ago. I'd come home from a long, stuffed chapa ride this afternoon and was dripping in sweat. We didn't have any water for bathing. So I grabbed three empty glass bottles from our cupboard and walked to the nearest stand to buy some ice-cold sodas for Sara, her friend Lola, and I to savor together, like our own personal Coca-Cola commercial. As I walked back, I passed a long line of Mozambican youth, all boys, sitting against a concrete wall, taking it easy in the shade.

Normally, I just hope to get past them without too much of a hassle. Today, however, they all ignored me until I was neeeearly past the last of them, then one yelled out enthusiastically, "Hello!" I looked up, even smiled I think, and politely replied, "Hi!"

Except immediately I realized the boy who had called out to me was actually talking on a cell phone. So then how it looked isthat I was initiating chitchat. The whole lot of them perked up in unison, like race horses exploding from their gates, and volleyed back with an array of English conversation-starters: "Good morning sir!", "Are you married?", "Where are you going?"

I know this sort of thing happens to people once in a while; but I do it all the time. 

The worst ever was a coworker in Kentucky asking if I wanted to get a drink after work. It was just him and I in this tiny 10x10' Department of Natural Resources office, at the back of a dusty double-wide filled with stuffed owls and dried snake skins, and I beamed in pleasure, delighted at how nicely our friendship was coming along. "Sure!" I chirped. Then he turned his head and there it was, a nano-sized mobile phone, plastered to his large Southern ear, girlfriend on the other line.

Never has it hit home more clearly how uncool it is to be an Eager Beaver.

That episode was so mortifyingly embarrassing that I actually wrote a short poem about it years later, in a DIY stab at art therapy, hoping to purge the humiliation from me. It didn't work.

The second situation ('say something to C that C doesn't hear, in front of B'), on the other hand, is a more recent phenomenon, in terms of distressing personal idiocies. It has almost always occurred in front of Sara, my roommate, who isn't so saintly as not to laugh at me, but celestial enough that she refrains from drawing attention to what just transpired.

I initially assumed it had to do with me learning Portuguese, because I'd stand directly in front of a Mozambican, say something simple to them in a normal voice, and they'd respond by walking off without acknowledging me. It made me feel really self-conscious, like I was learning a Klingon dialect of Portuguese but nobody had gotten around to breaking it to me.

But then it started happening in English too, in social situations where it took some gumption for me to say anything in the first place. Like, at a regional work retreat, to a unknown cute guy; or really, to anybody I didn't know at the regional retreat. Those functions are focused on team cohesion, making new friends, and getting to know and love each other, right? As horrible as that process can be, I'd made up my mind that I was there, you know, I was on board, committed to working toward that particular Christian hippie ideal and whatever else they threw at me. But what I was forgetting, again, is the rule about Eager Beavers. You can't be a free-loving Christian nonconformist AND retain even the slightest gradation of worldly social cool.

Or maybe others can. I couldn't. I kept stretching myself, trying to talk to people I'd never been introduced to, people who seemed fascinating and gregarious, possibly the Dorothy Days or William Wilberforces of our age, only to have them wander off without the slightest notion that I'd even spoken. And Sara there at my back, unable to repress either giggles or pity.

I have no idea how to end this. Public confession may be another attempt therapeutically cleanse myself. My hope is meager.