So, I'm standing around at school pick-up, talking to Experienced Mom, when this happens:
Experienced Mom: Guess what?
Me: What?
Experienced Mom: I'm gonna volunteer for the Book Fair!
Me: Great! I love the Book Fair!
Experienced Mom: Yes, I'm kinda nervous, it's totally out of my comfort zone, but I'm just gonna do it.
Me: Awesome!
I'm super excited for Experienced Mom, but I'm also super shocked. Experienced Mom isn't ill-named; her youngest is the age of my oldest and she's totally got it all together. For goodness sake, her oldest is in high school; she knows how to deal with high school moming! She's not remotely new to the moming game. The idea that anything is out of her comfort zone is simply something I had not considered.
Now, I could talk about a lot of things here; how we tend to see everyone else in relationship to us, the fact that you truly never know how someone else sees herself, the sheer terror that school events can cause, but instead I am gonna talk about being brave 12-year-olds.
You see, I have a theory that there are no actual extroverts and no real introverts. I think, deep inside, we are all terrified 12-year-olds at a middle school dance, standing along the wall, desperate to dance and equally desperate to not have anyone look at us. Not a one of us knows what we are doing, but we all think that everyone else does and we simply didn't get the memo. Does anyone send memos anymore? The group text? The Snapchat? Whatevers. Point is, we all feel nervous. Pretty much all the time. Everyone reacts to this differently: Some of us fake it until we make it, with loud laughs and plenty of jokes and sheer bravado. Some of us retreat into ourselves and our books. Some of us move to private islands and communicate exclusively through Snapchat, but I think those are just the millionaire millennials. And it's OK to be terrified 12-year-olds at a middle school dance. We all are. But, it's still a dance, and that means, someone has to actually start dancing. If not, we all just at a standing-around-while-music-plays, and we might be terrified, but we aren't immune to music. We might be scared, but, deep down, we all really want to dance. We need to dance.
This is life. Communication and commerce. Book Fairs need to happen. School pick-up needs to happen. Interaction needs to happen. Humans are social, for all our fear of rejection and humiliation, and we need to interact. This can be terrifying, and this will be terrifying. Especially if Perfect Mom shows up in skin-tight Lululemon and a tan from her recent work trip to Aruba. Terrifying. But, guess what? You CAN do it. If Experienced Mom can go outside her comfort zone and volunteer for the Book Fair, then you can be Room Mom. You can smile at the bank teller. You can decide to be on the PTA. You can wave to your neighbor. You can try a different book genre at the library this week. You can do it. You can go out there and be the first one on the dance floor. It's OK; take my hand, I'll come with you.
Because life is connection and life is caution. Don't be Elsa, angry-singing on a lonely mountaintop because no one understands you because you never told anyone anything and they never got a chance to try to understand you. And don't be Anna, trying to marry the first person who comes along because you are lonely and scared and it's easier to be part of the background of something than to actually figure out who you are and shine a little and have all the eyes on you.
You need to be an extrovert and an introvert; there's a time and a place for both. And, get this, you are both. Plus a terrified 12-year-old at a middle school dance who is about to be very brave.
Twelve and terrified.
Thanks!
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