Socially Awkward (2 page)

A few people raised their hands, and Chris Tucker
man
gave some response about text messaging and how he c
ould
instantly get responses from his friends
, instead of wasting time with a game of phone tag
.  This, apparently, made the process of making plans to “hang out” go much more smoothly.  Lyla Crosby offered her own response next, diving head-first into a conversation about how much American Online
’s
instant messaging changed American speech. AIM, she claimed, was responsible for the first
short form communication with abbreviations like LOL and BRB
. I
didn’t want to embarrass her in front of the class by explaining that
secretaries
actually
used
short-hand
notations like that
for faster dictation over fifty years ago, and just went back to my web browsing.

I could study secretarial sociology, perhaps, I thought, scanning down the list of links presented to me by Google.
Ooh!
Over socialization
—that could be an interesting topic, right? I clicked on the link and waited for the page to load.
Take. For. Ever. Why don’t you?

I
knew I should be
listening, but most of the class discussion
bounced
off of me like tennis balls on a court. It
wa
s hard to come up with
something meaningful to say
when your closest friend in th
e world wa
s the big sister who used to steal your dessert, listen in on your phone calls (when you got them), and frame you for every broken lamp in the house. I love Claire more than anyone in the world, but seriously, what could I
have
contribute
d
to th
at
conversation? Technology might have made it easier for Claire to nag me about getting a new inspection sticker
for my car
, but that was about it. Had it really done anything to alter our relationship?

Let’s not even discuss the fact that sisters don’t really count as friends. Do they? I thought they were kind of a given. You know, you’re born to the same parents, so you almost
have
to have something in common. Or at least a reason to care whether the other one is still breathing or not.

“Jennifer? Anything to add?”
said Dr. Chase suddenly.

I
froze with
my pen hanging out of my mouth, and shift
ed
my irises to the front of the room. Dr. Chase star
ed
at me
, looking rather stately
behind her wooden podium
.
I c
ould
feel my temperature
ris
ing, the blood pooling in my cheeks
. 
A
ll eyes we
re riveted to my reddening face. I ha
d
no
idea where the conversation had
travele
d while I’d
been lamenting my poor, lonely existence.
And web-surfing,
too, but mostly
lamenting.

Think, Jen. Think, think!

“Um, I…”  Not good enough. Luckily, Dr. Chase s
aw
my struggle
, took pity, and decided
to throw me a bone.

“Regarding communi
cation via the web?” she said
, folding her hands together and watching me patiently
.

“Well, I guess it provides us with a certain amount of anonymity,” I venture
d
, giving my professor a cautious look. She nod
ded
, urging me onward. “Sure, we can talk to our friends online, but it also opens up a whole new world of strangers to converse with. People we might never attempt to speak to in real life,
like at the grocery store
or in a college class.”

I tried
really hard not to look at the couple of football players sitting together in the front of the class, but my ridiculous,
wandering
eyes betray
ed
me. One of them
even
wink
ed
at me
, because he’s a huge jerk who thinks he’s hot enough to rattle a quiet, nerdy girl like myself.
I guess some of us haven’t actually graduated from high school yet.
I shook
it off
like a champ
and look
ed
back at Dr. Chase.

“In essence,” I continue
d
. “I suppose w
e’re almost
redefining the word
friend
today
with certain forms of online communication.”

“Meaning?” Dr. Chase
leaned forward with
her elbows
on the podium, smiling.
At some point, she’d slid her silver wireframe glasses onto her head.
She was definitely into
whatever it was
I was trying to say
. I decide
d
to keep talking, cautious not to sound like a desperate loser with no friends who hangs out on the internet all day.

“Well, I have
lots
of so-called friends on Facebook
who
are much more like drive-by acquaintances or friend
s of friends. Some of them are
people I once went to school with and never
even
liked, who wouldn’t have given me the time of day if I spontaneou
sly caught on fire
during a Calculus class
.”  This earned
a few chuckles, so I pause
d
until
the room grew
quiet again. “In person, I might spot these people across a department store and run the other way. But online, we’re
the kind of
friends
who
post comments on each other’s photos or send Happy Birthday wishes back and forth. I think the internet lets us all be hypocrites.”

My classmates remained
silent for a moment, as Dr. Chase’s eyes scan
ned
the room,
looking
for reactions. A few of them look
ed
puzzled, with an eyebrow raised or a head
tilte
d to
the side, but my professor seemed
pleased.
As I let my own words sink
through
my thick skull, I started to realize how unique a viewpoint I might have stumbled upon.
 

After class, Dr. Chase intercepted me on my way out.

“Well, Jen, I think we’ve found your topic.” She seemed pleased to have inspired
me with
such a great idea. Or at least to have hosted such a great debate in her classroom for a change.

“Internet hypocrisy?” I asked, skeptically.

Dr. Chase exhaled deeply, giving herself some time to think. “Maybe not as such, but there’s something to what you were saying about having a dual personality, on and off the web. I think it might be an interesting study to look at perception and falsehood on the internet. Maybe see what you can discover.”

“Do you really think so? I don’t even know how to go about doing this.” I smoothed my long brown hair on both sides, being sure to cover my hearing aids. Nervous habit.

“Well, it’s up to you how to
proceed,” said Dr. Chase, shoving a stack of notebooks and essay papers into her tote bag. “But I think you need to explore the anonymity and
duplicity
you were talking about. Find a way to really dig deep into these aspects of social media and I think you’ve got yourself a paper.”

Basically, it was the beginning of the end.

CHAPTER TWO

“So,
where does Olivia fit in?”
Mom interrupts again.

“I’m getting to that, Mom. See, I spent a few days thinking about the
internet
hypocrisy thing and kept coming up empty handed. I couldn’t find a way to do the research on something like that. It was too big to tackle the regular way.”

She nods, taking my empty tea cup and setting it on the coffee table.

“It wasn’t until I went to my
doctor’s appointment
later that week that I really came up with something
..
.”

A
s I took the bus down Commonwealth Ave to my doctor’s office
,
I tried to think about other things. Frustrated,
I’d let the idea of my research project go for a little while
.
I had other things to worry about.
My appointment that day
was the dreaded annual physical, one that tended to haunt me for the months that followed it.
For some reason, m
y doctor and I were having a constant disagreement about a hot-button topic: my weight.
W
hile I felt that it was simply an area that needed improvement,
nothing
life-threatening
, she wouldn’t let the subject go
.
 

Granted, my weight was
one
improvement I’d been “working
on
”
for a long time. When I say I’d been working on it, I mean that I
kept thinking about exercising, but ended up praying instead
to wake up one morning in a normal size—like
an 8 or a 10, not super skinny or anything. Just healthy.

Even with the extra pounds on my frame, I was still
pretty healthy. Healthy enough. I only g
o
t sick, like, once a year… and my acne
wa
s
finally starting to
clear up. That
was
a definite
plus;
especially
since
I’d heard a lady at a cosmetics counter once
say
that healthy skin
reflects
a healthy inside. Obviously, I had nothing to worry about
.

So why d
id
my doctor d
isagree with me every time I saw
her?

“Jennifer,”
Dr. Brinkley
sigh
ed
, flipping
through
the pages of my chart
at my annual physical
.
She
is a tall, thin woman with a bird-like nose. Her white blond hair is always impeccable in a neat chignon and the clothing she wears under her lab coat
is
usually
the latest from the Talbot’s rack. Not that I would wear anything from Talbot’s, at the risk of looking like a somewhat fashionable
plain-clothes nun
, but I d
id
n’t think I
would
fit into anything in that store
anyway
.

When Dr. Brinkley clear
ed
her throat, I pull
ed
my eyes away from her crisply creased slacks. Right. I
was
not here for
a
fashion
consultation
.

“Jennifer,” she trie
d
aga
in, this time leaning forward over
her crossed legs. Th
is wa
s her let’s-be-serious-for-a-moment face. I kn
e
w it well
, given how many times
I’
d
seen it before. “What are we going to do about your situation?”

“Situation?” I adjust
ed
my left hearing a
id, pushing it further in. Would she buy it if I played dumb?

“Yes,” Dr. Brinkley raise
d
an eyebrow at me,
as though
challenging me to ask her again. “For the last eight years, we’ve been talking about the same problem. And for eight years, you’ve been saying you were going to get healthy.”

“But I
am
healthy… enough.”

“
Sure…
H
ealthy enou
gh
for now. But you know very well that this extra weight will put you at risk for some scary things like
diabetes
and
heart disease
, among others. I’m not asking you to drop half your body weight here, Jennifer. Even losing ten-percent would significantly reduce your risk factors.
If you do nothing, you’re just waiting for it to make you sick or, eventually, kill you.
”

I blink
ed
at her. “Ouch, Dr. Brinkley.”

“Well, Jennifer, I’m concerned about you. The time for niceties is
over.  You need to lose
3
0 pounds to
get yourself to a healthy weight.
I ca
n’t do it for you.”  As she said this, Dr. Brinkley reached
a hand out to touch my elbow. “Do this for yourself. You deserve to be healthy.”

Looking into her eyes, I really wanted to tell her I could do it. That I
would
do it, once and for all. But 30 is such a big, big number
… and a bit more than that ten-percent that she was talking about.
Where was I supposed to start? “I don’t know how to do this… to stay motivated. I keep trying and… then I give up.”

“Close your eyes for a minute, Jennifer,” she said, her voice more soothing. I looked at
her in disbelief. “Just try it
, okay?”

I closed my eyes, albeit skeptically, and tried to clear my mind to listen to whatever words of wisdom she was about to impart.

“I want you to picture yourself now, looking into a mirror. See what you see every day and just look for a moment.”

I almost winced, visualizing myself reflected in the bathroom mirror. I never liked to look at myself,
not
any more than necessary. You know,
things like checking for misplaced hairs
or spinach
between
my teeth
were okay, but that was about it
.
This time, I tried really hard to see myself and all my imperfections without banishing the image.

“Good,” Dr. Brinkley cut in. “Now, imagine what it could be like if you reached your goal. What will you be proud of when you’re fitter and leaner? When you’ve trimmed away th
e excess and become the you who
’s inside this person?”

I could see myself transforming. Miraculously, my arms became sculpted, my thighs toned, my middle slimmed away to a healthy size. Somehow, my hair grew longer and turned blonde… but still, I could see that it was still me in the mirror. It was a whole new version of Jennifer and she looked happy.

“Have you got an image of what you’d like to become?”

I nodded, suddenly motivated, and opened my eyes.

“Excellent,” she smiled. “The best way to get there is to make small, achievable goals. Break your weight loss down into five pound increments and just move milestone to milestone until you get there. And give yourself a realistic timeline, Jennifer. You can’t expect to lose more than a couple of pounds a week at a healthy pace
.
No crash diets, nothing radical.
And I’ll be checking in on you during the next few months, okay?
”

I kept nodding, feeling like my head might snap off my neck with all the enthusiasm. I knew finally what I had to do, even if it wasn’t exactly what Dr. Brinkley had in mind for me.

Twenty minutes later, I le
ft
the clinic
with much more paperwork than I care
d
to read. I
had
pamphlets with titles like
Your Midsection & You
,
15
Bad
Eating Habits to Change Today
,
and
Yoga for Plus Size Women
just at the top of the pile
. There
were many more
of these things
,
plus
a
list of
recommendations
from Dr. Brinkley
. I resist
ed
the urge to pitch everything straight into the trash barrel outside the door and shove
d
them into my messenger bag instead.

I was walking out of that appointment with much more than boring reading material. Inadvertently, Dr. Brinkley had solved my academic dilemma with her visualization tactics. Losing all that weight still seemed daunting, but becoming the image I’d seen in the mirror was as easy as a Photo Shop
edit
. I wanted to burst with the excitement of it all. Finally, an idea I could really be passionate about!

Still, it was really tempting to actually take her advice the way it was intended…

As I wa
it
ed
for the bus, I look
ed
down at my midsection and frown
ed
. Why
did
it have to be so big and frumpy? So squishy and unsightly? Why c
ould
n’t I
just
flatten it with some Spanx every day
until
it
went
away? Why did my sister get all the skinny genes, and thus, the skinny jeans? It’s just not fair that I ha
d
to be Claire’s
rotund
sister, Dr. Brinkley’s
at-risk
patient, my parents’
chubby
daughter. I just c
ould
n’t take it anymore.

Although I hate
d
to admit it to myself, Dr. Brinkley
was
right. Sighing, I look
ed
up
to
see the white an
d yellow T bus approaching. I du
g in
to
my pocket for my Charlie Card and pause
d
, my fingers wrapped around the plastic
bus pass
.

No. No bus
today
.
It’s not raining or snowing, and it’s actually kind of a nice day.
You’re walking home,
L
az
y. Consider this the beginning of your midsection’s end.

****

At home, I sunk into my desk chair a
nd tried to ignore how sweaty I’d gotten
from my mere two-mile walk. So, I was out of shape, as it turned out. I d
idn’t need to dwell on this fact
;
I just needed to change it. So I Googled some workout tips, looked for a few nearby studios that had this plus-size yoga thing Dr. Brinkley was raving about, and settled on a course of action. Then I started tackling the diet p
art of my weight loss plan,
got frustrated at the price of all the delivered-to-your-door meals available out there, and decided I should just close my
web
browser and eat a Hostess cupcake
instead
.
Yes, that was much easier.

“Stop, stop, stop.” I shook my head at myself,
and then
contemplated getting a cat so it would be a little less weird when I talked to myself at home. Yeah, I’d just be talking to the cat… right.

“Jennifer Smith,” I continued. “Step away from the
Hostess and get back to work.”

By sheer force of my suddenly iron-clad will power, I decided to back out of the kitchen and return to my seat.  So the diet plan search was going to be an uphill battle. This was
a
good
thing
to be aware of
because childhood public service announcements taught me that knowing is half the battle
.
I couldn’t let it throw me off course. I decided to give it a break for tonight and turned, instead, to matters of my education.