I DON’T KNOW HOW

TO BE A PERSON

I’m not good at interacting with the world. In fact, I’ve never been good at interacting with the world.

I think I was born with a certain deadly combination of traits that would eventually wind up making me something of a misfit.

When someone doesn’t like being social, many people will assume it’s because they don’t like people. But that’s not necessarily the case. I’m often eager to at least try to engage; it just doesn’t always work out.

It’s not just that I’ll blank out. At times I can be like a robot suffering a severe malfunction. My brain glitches. And I know, I know! Everyone does the “you too” thing when people say, “Enjoy the movie” or “Enjoy your meal.” But recently I had a brain glitch that really took the cake.

These glitches are so, so painful. And, thanks to my good ole buddy OverThinking, the glitches continue to haunt me long after they’ve happened.

OverThinking will make sure I’ll never, ever, forget the phrase “On a bag.”

Due to the OverThinking and whatnot, I tend to misunderstand the world’s signals. I have trouble taking things at face value, and often jump dramatically to conclusions that usually aren’t true.

But at the same time, I think the world misreads me. One of the first comments I overheard about my appearance was “she has resting bitch face.” Which was a big surprise to hear. Inside I feel as harmless and bubbly as a puppy.

I also think that the world doesn’t hear me sometimes. Literally! Apparently, I have a very quiet voice, even if it doesn’t sound so quiet in my head.

So social interactions can be very exhausting for someone like me. I know I’m not alone. Social exhaustion is something many introverted, shy, or anxious people often suffer. But I’m also learning that if you isolate yourself too much, soon enough, you’ll get isolation exhaustion too.

That’s why I’ve been trying to find a balance.

In general, I’ve been trying to say yes to more things. It’s not easy when you’ve been making excuses all your life.

To tone down my anxiety, I’m also trying to be more selective about what’s actually worth worrying about; a sort of enforced apathy to combat the OverThinking. Imagine a superhero whose super power is the ability to say, “I don’t care.”

This is how I would apply the “I don’t care” power in real life. Take, for example, awkward silences. I’ve been reminding myself that they really aren’t a big deal, and they happen to everybody. An awkward silence here or there isn’t the end of the world.

See? Not so bad! I’m also trying to work on my conversation skills. Here’s what I’ve learned conversation isn’t: staying completely silent until someone brings up an obscure fact I know everything about, and then exploding into the conversation.

I spend a lot of time on Wikipedia researching random topics. But let’s try that again.

I think the most important thing I’ve learned, however, is that being social is supposed to be fun. I tend to forget this when I’m curled up in a ball, alone in my room, avoiding everything. I’m trying to remember that the point of seeing friends is to enjoy their company, not worry about their every opinion or every small misstep I take.

I’m not sure I’ll ever fully get rid of the robot glitches, or the OverThinking, or dramatically jumping to conclusions. But I’m learning how to have fun anyway, despite them.

Even if they still occasionally appear uninvited.

SADIE

(How I Learned to Get Over Myself

and Love Cats)

I have a problem with liking things that are really popular. It’s not a trait I’m proud of, but it’s one I’ve always had. Deep down, I’m positive I was born a cynical, popular-thing-hating soul.

This same logic applied to cats. Everybody seemed to love them, especially on the Internet. Logging online felt like logging into a cat-loving cult.

What’s more, cats didn’t particularly seem to like me. One of my friends had a black cat named Stormy, and we definitely didn’t vibe well.

I also didn’t really understand what it was that cats did that made them so great. From what I gathered, they sat around the house and occasionally knocked things down. And people photographed their cats doing this. Oh boy, did they photograph.

I always imagined that cats were the Paris Hiltons of the pet world: They didn’t quite deserve all the attention but they got it anyway.

Frankly, I didn’t ever think I’d own a cat. But that was soon to change when, all of a sudden, my two roommates and I had a mouse problem.

It started out very small (one-small-mouse small). In hindsight, our big mistake was that we didn’t just take care of it then. You see, my roommates and I are all big animal rights people. All three of us are vegetarians. And collectively, we agreed that we would avoid killing the mouse at all costs.

One mouse quickly became many mice. But we still couldn’t kill them. We bought humane traps, which completely backfired, because this is what happened:

Weeks went by, and it got completely out of control. We started using insane home remedies out of our desperation not to buy lethal traps. In one instance, we sprayed down the entire apartment with peppermint.

We might as well have been doing this:

As our mouse problem was increasing, a solution appeared. My mom had just adopted a kitten because her cat Jessie was depressed and needed company.

To us, a kitten seemed like the perfect humane solution. Young kittens aren’t trained, experienced hunters yet. But maybe just having a cat’s scent in the apartment would scare mice away. It was a natural remedy that (hopefully) wouldn’t hurt any animals.

I convinced my mom to let us take the kitten for a month.

The kitten’s name was Sadie. I went to pick her up, expecting the same mutually suspicious encounter I’d had with most cats before. But when I walked into the room . . . she was so . . . tiny. And her paws were so soft and . . . squishy! And her meows were so high-pitched and cute! And she was so . . . nice!

I brought her to my apartment, and my roommates loved her too. One thing that immediately surprised me about Sadie was how social she was. We would sit around the apartment chatting and she would sit with us, looking at us intently and listening. And I was surprised at how much she liked me! A cat had never liked me before. But Sadie actually spent most of her time trying to be near me.

As the weeks went by, my affection for her grew. Seeing her just lying around in the sun was the cutest thing in the world to me. And just as she always tried to be near me, I always tried to be near her. She made me behave in strange ways.

I had never understood the number of photographs people took of their cats. But Sadie was so special, so extremely precious, that I needed to document her fabulousness.

And she did get rid of the mice. One time, she actually caught a mouse, and we all watched in horror. But my prediction turned out to be true: Pure, naïve kitten Sadie didn’t kill the mouse. It got away; my roommates and I breathed a sigh of relief. And after that, the mice never returned. We shared a blissful month in which all of our problems were replaced by a cute and cuddly ball of joy.

However, my agreement with my mom was that I could keep Sadie for a month. At the end of the month, as in a fairy tale, she demanded Sadie back. After all, the whole reason she got Sadie was for Jessie, and Jessie was lonelier by the day. I responded to my mom’s perfectly legitimate request in horror.

She was right. I had to give her back. I’m no cat-napper. But I hadn’t been prepared for all the feelings I had toward Sadie.

The mice were gone, and so was Sadie. Much as I wasn’t prepared to feel affection toward her in the first place, I also wasn’t prepared to feel as sad as I did when she left. I didn’t realize how much a cat can become entwined with your daily life. I woke up with her, worked while she napped next to me, and struggled to eat meals as she attempted to steal food from me. She was a small friend I briefly shared my life with. Her tiny presence made that short time so much more joyful. When she went back to live with my mom, my room suddenly felt very empty.

But Sadie changed my life for the better. I’ve realized my opinions about things can radically change. For example, I’d never thought I’d be this person:

Liking cats has made my life much more enjoyable. And maybe this means I can learn to start liking other things that are popular too.

We’ll see!

(For those who are curious, Sadie and Jessie are currently living together in peace. Jessie’s not depressed anymore.)

THE SWEATER THIEF

I am smaller than the average human, and as a result, I am cold more frequently than most of my peers. If you’re not an “always cold” person, then I’m sure you’ve encountered one of them before.

This has been a problem for my entire life. It gets especially bad in the winter, when I’m frequently too cold to even leave my bed. And when it’s absolutely necessary to leave out of sheer survival, I try to take my bed with me.

The closest socially acceptable thing to carrying a bed around with me is a large, comfy sweater. But it goes beyond my need for warmth. I consider myself a sweater connoisseur in the same way someone would consider herself a wine expert or an art aficionado; to me each sweater is different, unique. Some are great; many are subpar.

Finding the sweet spot is harder than you might think. There are a lot of bad sweaters in this world.

As if that weren’t bad enough, good sweaters for women are even harder to find.

All this is why I’m a thief of sweaters . . . men’s sweaters, that is. And being a connoisseur, I can’t take just any sweater. It needs to come from the right person.

Consider an art thief. To him, what makes a painting worth stealing isn’t necessarily aesthetic beauty but the value that comes from its age, rarity, and, of course, association with a specific artist. The difference between the way an art thief sees a painting and the way I see a sweater is that no one but me recognizes a sweater’s true value.

I’ll go even further and say that I have pretty good taste in sweaters, even better than many of the so-called old masters did in their art. Or if not better, at least a little more . . . diverse. More well-rounded.

Good thing we don’t live in those times anymore!

So anyway, back to sweaters!

A beaten-up sweater worn by the right person is as priceless to me as a Monet. Priceless because it’s been worn by the Monet, the one and only, no other.

That’s why I only steal my sweaters from the right person. The person I really, really like. In a painful way.

It takes a very special someone to evoke that level of emotion in me.

The clothes you take from someone almost always smell like them. Smell is so important. Pheromones are powerful and addictive. When someone smells good, my lizard brain instincts kick in.

It’s not just the delicious smell. Putting on a sweater from the right person instantly transports me to all the feelings I have when I’m with that person.

But acquiring the sweater is a different story. Let me clarify. I am not a sweater borrower. I am a sweater thief. I belong to a long line of art fraudsters and forgers. Though admittedly, art fraud has gotten a little easier over the years.

My own theft technique is a careful game of misinterpration and willful ignorance. When someone tells me I can use a sweater for the day, little do they know they are transferring ownership of that sweater over to me. Forever.

Usually they start to catch on to what I’m actually doing.

But by then it’s too late.

By the time they realize what I’ve been doing, they’ve been living in a sea of lies for far too long.

Because if anything is guaranteed in a relationship with me, it’s that I won’t ever stop being a sweater thief.

Sarah Andersen is a young cartoonist and illustrator who lives in Brooklyn. She’s actually really cool and collected in real life. Definitely.

copyright © 2017 by Sarah Andersen. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews.

Andrews McMeel Publishing

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www.andrewsmcmeel.com

ISBN: 978-1-4494-8547-4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016951399

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