I am an introvert

Yesterday, Pastor Mike explained that he was an introvert, and that introverts recharge their battery by having some alone time. Whereas extroverts get recharged by socializing and being in public gatherings. His explanation offered some insight for both Carol and I, as to why I like my solitude, as opposed to being a social butterfly. Even though I am also an introvert, I do need friendships and people to confide in. At the moment, I am lacking that closeness, outside of my wife (who is also my best friend). Not having a job does limit my social interactions slightly, but we do have friends at church and in the paddling club. I just seem to have one of those personalities that takes longer than one or two meetings for me to befriend others. I believe that I’m a pretty nice guy, and if I were you, I’d like me. But, I am an introvert and it does take some time to draw me out of my shell.


I do believe that my introvertedness (is that a word?) was a learned behavior. Somewhere, there is an 8mm video floating around that shows I had no shyness as a child whatsoever. I was really a ham, at least in front of family. As a young boy, I seemed to show no ill-effects of the year or more that I spent as a little boy whose mother told him not to smile. You see, when I was around five years old, I fell down the basement steps and hit my mouth on a vent register. I had chipped and broken teeth, and looked nasty if I grinned. Either it embarrassed my mother, or she was trying to help me avoid embarrassment, but forever I was told not to show my teeth when I smiled. I looked like a pretty serious kid with that little lip-closed grin of mine. And naturally, it took another forever before my baby teeth started falling out and my new teeth came in.

Anyway, back to the learned behavior. I remember in elementary school, I was quite the social butterfly. I liked to talk. I talked to all the kids in class. In fact, I talked too much. At least that’s what my teacher thought. I remember being sent out to stand in the hall on more than one occasion. That was the punishment. You had to leave the classroom and stand in the hall. So, what might be considered as having an outgoing personality now, was squashed in the classrooms of Joshua Howard Elementary School.

I was also an only child for the first nine years of my life, so I learned to entertain myself in fantasy and imagination. Back then, mom’s didn’t have their own cars to cart you around town for extracurricular activities. There were no soccer leagues, and I was too small to play on the kid’s football teams. How many of us little boys were outcast in the early 60’s, because there were size and weight limits to play in organized sports? I liked football too! We would play tackle at the playground, and with my low profile, it was hard to bring me down.

Oh, and then there was the glasses. Getting glasses in second grade was another event to push me towards introversion. I have always been one easily drawn to tears. I still am, as my wife and kids can attest to. So getting teased about glasses, or about anything, definitely caused some withdrawal. Again, back in those days, you had two choices to the type of glasses you could wear - brown or black. Solid horned-rimmed spectacles were the name of the game. The word “dork” wasn’t even invented yet, but it may have made its first appearance in all the things that kids could come up with as they teased me for wearing glasses. We can be so cruel as children. An yes, there were times when I was dishing it out without a thought of how much I might be hurting another life, crushing them emotionally. The old “sticks and stones” stuff that the adults would preach was a lot of crap. I think physical cuts and bruises probably healed a lot better than those emotional wounds that sometimes scarred us for life. To all those others that I may have hurt; forgive me. I am sorry.