When other girls were learning to pour tea or wear white gloves or simper in the presence of young men – I wasn’t.
Like so many of you in the audience for these “Reads,” I was a nerd.
So instead of reading social cues – who’s addled by drink, who’s coveting the hostess – I stayed home and read novels. It took fierce cajoling to get me to a party.
If I did go out, I’d find a great read, even an irresistible story in “Reader’s Digest,” in someone else’s bathroom. I’d sit, entranced, until someone hollered, “I gotta pee NOW!”
But I scrambled, I blushed, I grew up to be a professor. As Head Nerd in the Classroom or Zoom Room, I can tell crude jokes that make teenagers roar.
Yet I still fear my peers.
Today, though, I finally saw the message. A cartoon chicken advises: “Just ask people the probing questions that’ll get them to talk about themselves.”
The second chicken lights up. “So what the hell is wrong with you?”
I’m back in the bathroom, with a good book.
