influx

One of my female owner’s goals for this year is to be more proactive socially. Sounds like a trivial goal to work towards, especially when many of her friends don’t seem to have a problem talking to new people or acquaintances.

Growing up , my female owner had always been the shy and tight-lipped one. She didn’t speak up in class, never volunteered an answer to teacher’s questions and her report cards usually said “need to speak up more in class”. The Asian mentality of “children should be seen and not heard” was probably applied to her upbringing. The beginning of each new school year always brought anxiety. She usually would have a stranger as her new partner and erm, yes, she tended to wait for the partner to break the ice and make the first introduction.

More than 20 years on, things seem to remain the same. Passive and anti-strangers. My female owner knows that this year would be a year of stretching beyond her comfort zone. She is already struggling in her new bible study group where there are constantly new people visiting the group (she is actually quite pissed by some people who go around shopping for a bible study group, looking for a “suitable” group. Did they ever consider the flip side, if they would be suitable for the group?).

Believe you me, my female owner has been distressed by the influx of people and the (unspoken) expectations of older folks to assimilate the new people into the group. At one point, she got so pissed with someone who tried to get her to talk to a newbie (who complained that she felt left-out in the group), that my female owner said outright that she is anti-social and don’t like to talk to new people. Ah, better not press her buttons or she might just quit on you.