I was sitting on the top deck of a double-decker bus that was winding its way through Rotherhithe towards Canada Water. My phone vibrated. I had a message: ‘yo what u up to, want to catch up?’ It was my friend Mary who had accompanied me to the Amersham Arms Meetup. I sent a reply: ‘I’m going to the London shyness group, London Bridge. Dead easy to find: Banker and Barrowboy. I’ll be there just after three’.
Seven minutes later, Mary sent another message: ‘On northern line, marvellous. I’m coming!’
I was a bit worried about going to the shyness group. It’s not that I didn’t want to go; it was more that I’m not particularly shy. There was a time when I used to be; nights out in the pub used to be an ordeal; they were evenings where I would hardly speak, choosing to listen to banter rather than actively participate. Plus, my friend Mary isn’t shy at all. You might even go as far as describing her as a glorious extrovert. Mary loves to talk.
Half an hour later, I was standing outside the Banker and Barrowboy, on the south side of London Bridge. I had been there twice before, and my main overriding memory was that it was incredibly noisy.
‘Is this the Meetup?’ I said to one of many people who were suspiciously loitering outside the pub.
‘Yes! It is! Welcome. My name is Dorota. What is your name?’ Dorota held out her hand. I was then introduced to four or five people in rapid succession, and then to the temporary host of the night, Tim, who greeted me enthusiastically. I learnt that Tim was hosting for the first couple of hours since the main organiser, Zoe, had a diary clash.
I chatted to Tim for a few minutes before we went into the pub; I needed to ask him something.
‘Tim, I’ve got a friend coming down. The thing is, she’s an extrovert. Is that okay?’ Tim smiled, laughed and said it was fine; friends were always welcome. I asked him what drew him to this particular group. ‘I used to suffer from social anxiety really bad at one point, but I don’t as much these days; it’s just a nice group of people. Everyone is really friendly and accepting’. It also turned out that Tim played guitar in a band, and was a lead singer too.
Inside, the pub was as I remembered it: it had an incredibly high ceiling, a large bar, and a mezzanine floor. Our voices echoed from every hard surface, making it difficult to follow conversations. A note on a menu explained that it was once the headquarters for the National Westminster Bank before it moved to the building where the Health Informatics Meetup had been held. I ordered a beer then found my way to a table that was rapidly being colonised by shy people.
I said hello to the chap who was sitting opposite me, shaking his hand. ‘Hello. I have this introduction for people I’ve not met before. It takes around 20 seconds; it’s easier that way. My name is Fari. I’m from South London, and my parents are from Iran. My father had a taxi business there before he moved to London which was a long time ago. He also had an interest in rock music, which I’m interested in too; seventies and eighties music. I come to this group quite a lot. I’m originally from South London but I now live in East London’.
On my left was Nicola from France, who hadn’t been to the group before. Sitting next to Nicola was Rob. Rob was studying for a doctorate in Education and Philosophy and was also a part time supply teacher for both primary and secondary schools.
‘Chris!’ yelled Mary. Mary put her vodka lime and lemonade on the table, gave me a quick hug, pulled up a chair and sat down. Mary was elegantly dressed; I wondered whether she had dressed up for the occasion. After a quick hello and a catch up, Mary dived into conversations with the shy people who were sitting at our table.
As we chatted my eye caught a glimpse of a small group of people who had sat down at a table not too far from ours. Tim went over and chatted to them for a bit, presumably trying to put them at ease, but after about three quarters of an hour, they had left, along with about three other visitors.
‘Hello! I’m Zoe, what’s your name?’ The group’s leader had arrived. Zoe was wearing a glamorous black and red dress, and bright red lipstick. I introduced myself and asked her a little bit about the group. Apparently, it wasn’t ‘her’ group, as such, but she ran events within the group. Like Tim, she used to have social anxiety (but didn’t have it so much these days).
Mary and I went to grab a bite to eat, and when we returned, everyone seemed to be sitting at different tables. Shyness filtering had taken place: the not so shy people sat on one set of tables, whereas the painfully shy sat on a different table, not saying much to each other.
Three new people had arrived: Simon, Gerry and Adrian.
‘Let’s take a selfie! Let’s take a selfie!’ suggested Mary. It took two attempts to take a stupid picture of ourselves. ‘I’m gonna tag us in it, but first I’ve got to Instagram it!’ I chatted to Adrian whilst Mary fiddled with Instagram filters, trying to give our pic a vintage feel.
‘So, why have you chosen to come to this group?’ I asked, struggling to make myself heard over the terrible acoustics.
‘That’s, erm, a good question’, he replied, almost appearing embarrassed. ‘It’s a nice group, and it’s good to get out and meet people. I have a stammer, and I’ve found that going to groups like this really helps because you get to talk to lots of different people’.
Adrian’s answer struck me with its honesty. I could also relate, perfectly, to what he was saying. Although I’m calling this quest my ‘mid-life crisis’, for the last ten or so Meetup events, I have questioned whether I was actually making any progress in figuring out what I want to do for the rest of my life. I’ve figured out that I’m still interested in technology and vaguely enjoy visiting weird cults, but other than that, I hadn’t arrived at any life changing conclusions. In some respects, I realised that I was completing this quest for exactly the same reason as Adrian: I have a stutter too.
The reality was that my stutter had turned me into a ‘practical introvert’, which meant that I would choose not to communicate with others simply because it would be easier not to, even though my soul would be crying out to make a connection, to tell a joke, or to share an anecdote.
What these Meetups were telling me is that I’m far from the introvert I always thought I was. Instead, I’m more like my friend Mary, my glorious extrovert friend. The problem was that now I’m starting to ‘out’ myself as someone who is more outgoing, I have less of an inclination to stay inside and read books or meddle with computer software which, arguably, might not be great for my full time career as a technology geek.
I had started to realise that my speech dysfluency, or my neural tic that makes me say stuff in a different way, had inadvertently placed me in the middle of one of the most exciting, fast moving and dynamic disciplines in the world. As a teenager I thought that if I got a job ‘with computers’, I wouldn’t have to speak to many people. The irony is that because technology is so intangible, you need to communicate all the time. Plus, I also really like people.
The bell for last orders rang out. Mary and I drained our glasses, said goodbye to people, and found our way to the street.
It had been fun, but slightly weird; the shy people didn’t scome across as being very shy. In fact, most of them had been pretty chatty. Visiting the group had made me think. It made me think about belonging, and difference, and what other groups I would end up visiting on my journey, and how many groups I needed to visit until I arrived at a destination of awareness and self-knowledge. With a mere thirty more groups to go, perhaps I wouldn’t find a destination. Perhaps at the end all there would be is even more groups, more people, and more difference.
No comments:
Post a Comment