Clawing Off The Cat

Ever since childhood, I have been exceptionally shy. My mother said that on leaving the womb, instead of producing a shrill loud cry to announce my existence, I blushed and tried to cover myself up. With that as my start in the world, it is no wonder that I have never been a conversationalist and small talk is most definitely not my forte. It’s just not who I am. I have never seen the purpose of discussing the fact that it is raining for several minutes, or conversing on whether Superman or Batman would win in a fight.
        Nonetheless, the world of the chatterbox intrigued me more than I was willing to admit, and so I decided to settle my mind once and for all. I decided that on Tuesday 21^st October I would wake up and start talking, then not stop until I went to be that night.
        The prospect of what I was going to do both terrified and enthralled me. On the one hand, I would often be faced with the choice of talking to anyone about anything or talking to myself and looking like an escaped lunatic. Without meaning to seem crude, choosing whether to kill my mother or love of my life would have been easier. That bastard is always leaving the seat up. Yet there was still the fact that this day could wash away my stifling shyness and teach me the act of being sociable. This meant I may actually be able to go to parties where I didn’t know anyone! Golly, what a thought!
          Tuesday 21^st soon came, and I woke at 7:30 to not the best of starts, as I completely forgot what I was supposed to be doing until 8:00. Let me make it clear, however, that after realising and cursing loudly, I put my best tongue forward into my continuous talking. Or should I say continuous bollocks? 

          In an effort to keep my voice permanently preoccupied, I switched on my itunes to sing along to all the songs. Unfortunately, I discovered I know the words to about 6 of 906 songs, so found myself doing the backing vocals of “do doo do dooo” instead. When creating the laws of that day, I hadn’t thought of what would constitute as speech, but I decided that as long as coherent noise was leaving my mouth, it would do.
        Besides singing along with my itunes, I got creative that day by producing my own lyrics. There was the “brushy, brushy, brushy” song, which caused me to spray Colgate all over the bathroom, and the “crunchy, crunchy cornflakes” song which I sang while eating my rice krispies.
           My younger brother Ryan accompanied me on the walk to school. Socially, Ryan and I are opposites. Mixed-race Ryan could walk into a Nazi camp sporting a skull cap and be best friends with every soldier in 5 minutes. He is simply a people person. Ryans incessant talking would normally drive me insane, but on that day, he was a Godsend. We never ran out of anything to talk about, the journey was flawless and I didn’t even need to talk to myself.
        School registration went as well as I expected, seeing as it contains 3 of my best friends, a few other friends, some acquaintances and a couple of people that I could just about bare to talk to.
         I also had positive expectations of French, my first lesson of the day which lasts 4 periods. I had figured that Madame would be pleased, as normally she spends her timescreaming “PARLE, PARLE, PARLE” and now I would have no choice but to parle, parle and parle some more.

        I left French at break feeling very pleased with the day. So far I hadn’t been shoved into any awkward social situations or had to talk to myself, and I walked into the sixth form common room thinking how superbly everything was going. How stupid of me. Had I never heard the childhood legend of jinxing?
        I walked into the common room to see Emily Thomas sitting at the main table, surrounded by seven people whom I would normally have spoken to.
Emily Thomas had been in my high school. The strange thing about Emily being in the common room was that she didn’t even go to my sixth form, she was at a college in London that was behind a newsagent and students paid an extra £45 if they wanted to be taught in english. Baby Jesus knows how she got in as, at a very leggy 5ft 11, she’s hard to miss. More to the point, I despised her with every fibre of my being. We had never got along and she stole two of my best friends away from me two years ago. Without meaning to seem like an immature 7 year old, I normally would rather have dug out my intestines, tied them around my neck and used them to hang myself from a cliff than go over and speak to her or anyone near her.

         I was now more out of my comfort zone than a priest in a gay bar. Wait. That doesn’t work does it? Nevertheless, I was faced with the situation that I had sought to overcome. I had been handed the sword, placed in front of the dragon and now it was my duty to close my eyes and lunge. I started to make my way towards the table, muttering to myself with a heart that could have beaten Usain Bolt in a race. My mind ran through every opening line as I tried of think of what I would say. Here is a lovely little slice of my insanity for you to delve into: O, what do I say? Lovely weather? No, they aren’t 72. Nice shoes? No, I don’twant to lie. Ok, I’ll make a joke. But I can’t just come out with a joke, I’ll look weird. You are weird. Shut up.

      Throughout these musings, the table of doom got closer and closer, and then further and further away. I had walked straight past it and sat in the corner of the common room. Cursing myself under my breath, I pulled out my books and started to pretend to do some work. Hence Baby was left in her corner, and there she stayed.
      Staring at the empty page before me, I was faced with a strong sense of self-loathing. This was far from the first time I had sent myself to the corner to avoid speaking to people. In my dip into depression, I had forgotten to keep talking and realised after about 5 minutes that I ha just been staring into space and had failed.
        Filled with less disappointment than I expected, I shrugged and swore half-heartedly. I had tried, and the sweat patches on my jumper could prove it, but I couldn’t do it.
      On reflecting my failure, I came to a simple conclusion. I don’t “do” random people or strangers. I stick to my close and personals and let time break away my shyness. It had worked for me for the lat 17 years and had meant that I never had to socialise with fake people that I knew didn’t actually like me.
       Despite my positive conclusion, I couldn;t help but think that I was still too quiet. I was still unsociable. I was still unfriendly. I was still everything my father had scolded.

      I haven’t clawed the cat off my tongue yet. But by God, I will.