You may recall that a while back I posted an anecdote about spooking one of our dance teachers. I asked him about his JD out of what he thought was the clear blue sky, having momentarily forgotten that he'd put it in his email sig. I admit the impulse to do this strikes mostly because I find the startled reaction funny; I indulge this one because it's arguably a good thing to remind people that the cool things they do are, in fact, visible to other humans.
Turns out that once I explained how I knew that, he also thought it was pretty funny. I was suddenly a very interesting person, and he wanted to hang out and chat. This is great, and also makes me very nervous. It's not that people never talk to me at the desk, just that I'm the receptionist and therefore basically scenery, so it's not something they have much investment in. I am a part of the familiar tableau, and the small talk they make is part of the ritual of coming in for their classes, like saying good morning to your coworkers as you pass through on your way to do your actual job. Camping in the lobby specifically to have a conversation with me is rare, and notable when it happens.
I never know quite what to make of this. Historically, people who give themselves whiplash to interact with me have run about 50/50 'this person is awesome and will be fun to chat with forever' and 'this person will go mad trying to get my attention, then freak out because they have my attention, then go back to mad attention-getting efforts when I respond to their freak-out by backing off'. Some of them are good friends now, some I will yeet myself across the street to avoid. I think I do a pretty good job of covering up the ??? reaction when I realize they have literally moved their bodies next to my desk to talk to me while stretching, but it's definitely there, even if they don't notice.
I don't think this one means any harm by it, but they never do. Nobody wakes up in the morning and wades into the outside world intending to confuse the fuck out of everyone else.
Another thing I never know what to do with is that he seems to mask significantly less when I'm the only one he's talking to than when other people are around. He forgot to email in his class roster one week and when he realized, he absolutely deflated, literally all the way down to the floor with his head in his hands. Career dancers tend to be physical in their reactions -- just the nature of the beast -- but this was pretty spectacular even so. This also happens to me a lot; I rarely if ever know why specific people choose to behave this way, but I suspect it has to do with me not being thrown by it. I don't usually bother being confused when someone responds to X thing happening in an unusual way, I just make a note to myself that this is evidently how that person reacts to X, and go on with my day. Wigging out over it would be a waste of time.
I try not to base any conclusions on it. As with many things in life, it has a lot more to do with the other person's internal state than anything about me. I do like thinking that other people don't see me as someone who demands they perform 'normality' all the time. Even that might not really be a supportable conclusion, but if it isn't, it seems to be a pretty harmless error, and it's easier on me to operate that way in any case. Being the arbiter of propriety and etiquette all the time sounds exhausting.
I did ask him later if he always kicked himself so hard over mistakes. He can be pretty extra in general, because dancer, but this is the only time I've ever pointed out that I notice. The intended takeaway here is less 'I have been wondering about what goes on in your head, mwahahaha' and more 'an outside observer thinks you may be a bit hard on yourself'. I give in to this impulse a lot, too. In an ideal world, it would spark a train of thought that someday ends in the other person engaging in slightly less self-flagellation. Probably it won't, but it might, and if I can't stop myself from pressing people's buttons, then at least I can be nice about it.
He seems a good egg, at any rate, and interesting enough to talk to. He popped up in some university sweats a few weeks ago, and if that's where he got his JD, then his graduate degree is worth a cool quarter of a million dollars. He can't have that kind of fuck-you money lying around, or he wouldn't also have some of the very mundane problems he mentions while making small talk; it's unlikely he's got those sorts of loans either, or he'd be busting his ass as a junior associate somewhere and not have time to teach all the classes listed on his website. I suppose it's possible he's got an eccentric dowager aunt somewhere who decided her favorite nephew needed to try being a lawyer, but more likely that he earned a free ride to a Top 10 law school.
And then promptly quit to go back to dance. Anyone who's that allergic to the idea of ever having any money has probably got a pretty good story to tell about it.
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