Cringeworthy: Why Some People Are Comfortable In Any Situation – And Some Never Are

209 Pages·2018·1.37 MB·English

by  Melissa Dahl

ABOUT THE BOOK
Have you ever said goodbye to someone only to discover that you’re both
walking in the same direction? Or had your next thought fly out of your head in
the middle of a conversation? Or accidentally liked an old photo on someone’s
social media feed, revealing yourself to be a bit of a stalker?
Melissa Dahl has experienced all of these awkward situations, and many more.
Now she invites you to follow her into life’s most mortifying moments, drawing
on personal experience and in-depth psychological research to offer a thoughtful,
original take on what it really means to feel awkward. Along the way she
answers the questions that confound us all, including:
Why are situations without clear rules likely to turn awkward?
Are people really judging us as harshly as we think they are?
Does anyone ever truly outgrow their awkwardness?
If you can learn to tolerate the most awkward situations – networking, difficult
conversations, hearing the sound of your own voice – your awkwardness can be
a secret weapon to making better, more memorable impressions. When everyone
else is pretending to have it under control, you can be a little braver and grow a
little bigger.
CONTENTS
COVER
ABOUT THE BOOK
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
EPIGRAPH
CHAPTER 1
The Awkward Age, Part 1
SECTION 1
Is That What I Look Like?
CHAPTER 2
The Tribal Terror of Self-Awareness
CHAPTER 3
Making Faces at Emotionally Intelligent Machines
CHAPTER 4
Your Growing Edge
SECTION 2
Is Everyone Staring at Me?
CHAPTER 5
The Awkwardness Vortex
CHAPTER 6
Dance Like No One’s Watching, Because No One Is! Except When
They Are
CHAPTER 7
Your Flaws Are My Pain
CHAPTER 8
Cringe Attacks
SECTION 3
What Am I Supposed to Do Now?
CHAPTER 9
Awkward Silences at the Office
CHAPTER 10
Laughing at Imaginary Tumblers of Spilled Whiskey
CHAPTER 11
The Awkward Age, Part 2
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOTES
INDEX
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT

For Dodie Potthoff
How embarrassing to be human.
—Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus
CHAPTER 1
The Awkward Age, Part 1
“HOW COME NO one here likes Hanson?!!” I exclaim weakly. I’m reading aloud
from a small spiral-bound notebook—dark neon purple with multicolored swirls
and stars—purchased for $6.99 at a Claire’s in 1997. It is my seventh-grade
journal, and I’m reading it now, twenty years later, to three people I only met
this morning. “I’ve been getting pictures of them off the Internet almost all day
today and they’re so cute! How could anyone not like them?”
I stop and look up from the journal. “I feel like I should note that every time I
write ‘to,’ it’s the number and not the word,” I say to my audience. All four of us
are seated in armchairs near the bar at Littlefield, a performance venue in
Brooklyn. Before today, I’ve only been here at night, and it’s a little disorienting
to see it in the muted light of a sunny January afternoon, though this is by far the
least surreal aspect of what’s happening right now.
The three strangers listening to me read are Stephen Chupaska, a bespectacled
man with floppy brown hair and a skinny scarf, both of which he has a habit of
tossing back with a flourish; Christina Galante, a woman with a wry smile and
animated eyes who is taking notes on a laptop as I speak; and John Dorcic, an
affable, extroverted guy with a neatly groomed goatee. They are producers for
the New York City branch of Mortified, a live show in which performers read
from their teenage diaries. Onstage. In front of hundreds of people. I think I’ve
had a version of that nightmare before, but in it I was only physically naked, not
emotionally so.
This is my “audition” for a spot in the show later this year, and I feel like I’m
maybe blowing it. The word “audition” is in quotes because I’ve been instructed
by Dave Nadelberg, the creator of Mortified, not to call it that. It isn’t one, not
really, because anyone brave enough to volunteer to be in this show is welcome
to participate, provided they have enough material they created during their
teenage years for a ten-minute piece. But I’m skeptical about my chances. I’ve
spent the last two hours sitting in on a “curating session,” to use Nadelberg’s
preferred term, and I’m in awe of the people I’ve seen already today. True, a lot
of it’s been silly. One guy ended every journal entry with a detailed description
of everything he wore and everything he ate that day, plus a signature daily sign-
off: “PEACE, one love.” But most of what I’ve heard today has suggested the
beginnings of some real artistic talent. Earlier this morning, a woman read poetry
she wrote in high school, which Galante, the show’s lead producer, rejected
because it was too good. I do not expect to encounter that problem.
At my “‘2,’ not ‘to’” explanation, the three producers nod politely, then
indicate that I should keep going. I take a shaky breath and continue reading the
March 7, 1998, entry, cringing harder with every word. “What am I gonna do? I
have to call long distance if I want to talk about Hanson!”
I pause again. It’s an unseasonably warm day, but somehow I don’t think
that’s why I’m sweating. “This is so ridiculous,” I say. “None of this seems
usable. Is any of this usable? I just—I don’t want to waste your time, and I really
respect the show and what you guys do—”
Galante cuts me off. “We won’t know if it’s usable unless you keep going,”
she says, raising her eyebrows at me over her laptop.
Later all three of them will swear I’m the most tense, tight-lipped participant
they’ve ever had. I start reading an entry and then decide it’s too stupid to keep
going, so I flip ahead and try another, only to abandon that one just as quickly. I
stammer, I blush, I start sweating so much I have to remove the olive-green
jacket I’m wearing, though it’s too late—there are telltale wet spots under the
arms, two large circles now colored a slightly darker olive green. You idiot, I
think. Wearing dark colors to hide nervous underarm sweat was something you
came up with in middle school. The kid who wrote this diary is smarter than you.
But in my own defense, it makes sense that I’m more hesitant than a typical
Mortified performer. I’m not a performer. It’s not like I’m auditioning because
I’m dying to read my middle-school journal in front of hundreds of strangers;
even just these three are a little much for me. I’m only doing this for research.
BY THE TIME I audition for Mortified, I’ve been officially studying awkwardness
for the better part of two years; unofficially, for the better part of three decades.
(They do say to write what you know.) Most of us went through an awkward
stage, and I am no exception. I had a somewhat unique experience growing up in
that my family moved every two years or so, which meant the second I got the
hang of cool at one school, we’d leave for another town, and usually another
state. Awkward moments inevitably ensued every time I had to play the new kid,
and I quickly learned that what is acceptable at one school will be roundly
mocked at another. You could love Hanson in Nashville in 1998, but in Chicago
you’d better learn to like the Backstreet Boys. You could wear Clueless-style
kneesocks in southern Louisiana in the early 2000s, but in northern California
you’d be side-eyed for clinging to a passé trend. Every young person is
hyperaware of social rules, but learning different ones over and over as I grew
up made me even more sensitive to moments that deviate from the norm. And
perhaps more prone to causing them.
Anybody who writes for a living ends up writing what they know, whether
they mean to or not, but the truism tends to be rather literal when your subject is
psychology, a field I’ve reported on for the last ten years. “The best thing about
this job,” an old boss used to say to me, “is that we don’t just get to ask
interesting questions. We get to find the answers too.” She and I shared a
predilection for oddball queries about the human experience: Why do so many of
us hate the sound of our own voices? Why does remembering something stupid I
said or did years ago still make me blush today? And what could possibly be the
point of feeling embarrassed on behalf of people I’ll never meet—like the cast
and crew of La La Land when they accepted the Best Picture Academy Award
(which actually belonged to Moonlight)? In these cases, my former manager’s
words turn out to be only half true. They are interesting questions, but I couldn’t
find a satisfying answer to explain why each of these things made me cringe;
nothing like a Unified Theory of Awkwardness appeared to exist in the scientific
literature. And so I set out to create my own.
But here’s a journalism tip for you: Don’t just trust your own instincts.
Consult the experts. In this case, I’ve taken care to interview the people who
know the subject best. Some scientists and philosophers, for example, have
devoted their daily lives to the study of emotions like happiness, or envy, or
guilt, or boredom. For my research I needed to talk to the people who spend their
days investigating what it means—indeed, how it feels—to cringe, to experience
the physical, visceral tightening in your gut and the flush in your cheeks and the
sweat on your palms and the panic in your heart when you’ve totally, utterly
embarrassed yourself.
Which means, obviously, that I consulted middle schoolers.
A handful of twelve-and thirteen-year-olds from northern California and
central Minnesota were nice enough to answer what increasingly felt to me, as I
spoke with them, like cringeworthy questions from a weird adult. One of the
things I asked them was to define what “awkward” meant to them. Here are a
few of my favorites, taken from conversations, e-mails, or texts:
Awkwardness is when no one is talking.
It’s when you don’t know what to do.
Awkwardness is a feeling of being uncomfortable. Where you are often left speechless or
unable to speak. You are going to want to get out of that place as quick as you can.