So as part of my promise to make this blog more consistent again and to not disappear on it for too long, I've asked some of my favourite people to guest blog for me. They've been given the freedom to blog about anything and they don't have a deadline. Let's do this!
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My story is not similar
yet not very different from the stammering comedian from the Nescafe
commercial. They are similar in the sense that we both haven’t given up
exercising our humour muscles. But they are different in the way that unfortunately
I do not seem to have any. Wait, now that’s not completely true. I think I have
do them, they just might be malfunctioning ones.
‘Don’t frown so much Roshni!’ was what my grandmother always said while she was still alive. Growing up I was always the serious and maybe even slightly uptight nerd of my school group. No matter how hard I tried I could never match my friends in the social skills. I wasn’t witty, I wasn’t charming, I wasn’t cute and I wasn’t Funny.
I was always trying to fit in. It is a horrible habit, one which I wasn’t able to kick for the first 20 years of my life. Being a socially awkward fat person with an unimpressive personality can be deadly, quite literally. I often imagined walking onto a busy road and getting hit by a passing bus and then the scene would play out in my head, comic book style, ending with floating bubbles over my still upright body; they read ‘Fuck! I am so fat I dented the bus.’
But through it all, I found myself never giving up. I would shut myself from the world believing that I could be a recluse and it would make me happy. I found that it had the opposite effect. I wanted to meet new and interesting people, I was curious about the world beyond my little city.It came down to a simple choice. The acceptance of the fact that I wasn’t the recluse I had thought myself to be.
It started with going on a blind date and never looking back thereafter.
I would sit silently at a table full of people and observe; melting into the background and furniture, sitting still and silent for hours. But I went out. I met new people. This continued for a few months and then I decided to move to a new city to go to graduate school.
Once again I tried to fit in, I would drink for hours, sit and listen to people talk. Sometimes alcohol gave me the courage to talk and I would talk too. At times I was slightly witty. But I was a sucky storyteller; I couldn’t get people to stay interested in my story for long.
It was hard to accept. I have fantasized about being a story teller from the early dark ages of mankind. Sitting around a fire, lit with its glow and reciting a story to an enthralled audience.But my stories have too many hiccups; take too long to get to the punch line. I struggle with clever retorts. It is like my brain freezes, I think of a million things to say but nothing makes sense, my heart starts beating quicker than its usual pace, my mouth goes dry. The worst thing follows; a worthless ‘ha’ escapes my mouth, sounding the siren of my defeat.
But I haven’t given up. I still go out and meet new people. I talk a little more than I used to. I recite long silly stories. I try to crack jokes and play silly pranks.
My darling roommates, I call them that with a lot of sarcasm tipped love, have termed these efforts of mine ‘Attempts at Humor’.
-Guest Blogger
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