Life, Problems

@Dying_Socially

A'ight, missy WonderStorm_666, you have been bugging me, so here. You're welcome.

Dying socially. Don't we all have an underlying fear of deathly embarrassment for everything we do? Okay, maybe not everything, but if you wouldn't be afraid to sing Beautiful Trauma solo in front of a crowd of strangers I'm not sure who or what you are.

There's bigger and lesser degrees of social anxiety, but some degree is present in likely all of us, whether it's a 4-minute oral presentation, dance performance or ordering coffee. If you don't or haven't ever felt a shred of anxiety about total public humiliation, you're either from Saturn, made of stone or need to put down the champagne. I'm serious. Put it down.

Now the young human-thing I mentioned at the beginning of the chapter is who we like to call Hope, and she has been begging me to do a chapter with her in it, since we've seen each other IRL. And holy God, did I have so many ideas yet so few ideas at the same time. I eventually decided on writing about this feat of stupid mushy brain guts called 'social anxiety' since we both obsess over how much of it we have.

Only a short story this time, unfortunately.

If you don't know what New York Fries is, you must be the french fries, and I'm sorry. So one day, me and Hope were waiting in line for NYF, anxiously awaiting the moment where we achieve the fries, achieve the ketchup and move our butts out of there before anyone can say otherwise. Naturally, though, we forgot about the human interaction...

We slowly grew closer to the counter as the line decimated like my Android battery (sorry, it's true) and eventually, we were only two orders away from the counter when I actually did the math. What came out of my mouth was potentially the most well-written sentence I've ever spoken aloud:

'Uh.'

Hope glanced up from the floor with obvious confusion on her face. 'What's up?'

I stared intently at the board, eyes dodging from item to item, and stuck out my lip to the side. 'Dude, I don't have that kind of money.'

'Oh my God, Len.'

Only one person stood in front of us now while I grilled Hope for any cash she might have on her, and eventually we just came up to the final amount as we approached the counter. Close call, but obstacles yet remained in the form of:

'Can I help you?'

We froze.

Both our stupid anxious brain guts ran around trying to figure out the appropriate answer while our best bud Social Anxiety screeched like a howler monkey in the background, but me, being slightly more put-together on these terms than Hope managed to push up my glasses and smile. Like, a head-tilted-back, thumbs-up smile.

My first reaction, clearly, was 'what was THAT?'

Hope was basically melting into a pile of nerve-wracked goo on the floor, so I pointed out the names of what we wanted before I melted myself. The lady didn't seem to worried about it, though, yelling into the back to make these two little imploding goo-kiddos some fry shizzle, and fast.

We both stood there quite awkwardly, Hope and I, the melting process slowing down quite severely before realizing we still had to pay.

I don't pay.

I don't want to make physical contact with a strange human through passing money from me to them.

But neither does Hope. So you know what I manage?

I pick up the change Hope gave me, separate the coins and the bills and drop it onto the counter. Yup. Drop it onto the counter, where it's impossible to pick up unless you have nails longer than a stereotypical mean girl's or you painstakingly squeeze up every single coin with your sad, broken nubs of fingernails. Or you just have regular nails, which is not me.

The lady just kind of looks at it for a second before slowly lowering her outstretched hand and scooping the money off the plastic countertop, pointing to the left and almost-whispering 'You can wait over there.'

Needless to say, our feet covered those three steps to the left faster than Sonic the Hedgehog on a bucketful of golden rings.

Also, if you've ever responded a loud 'OKAY' to a 'WE'LL BE RIGHT WITH YOU', tell me all about it in the comments. If you want, of course. It might bring back the traumatic memories. Hush hush, child.