The somewhat-overdramatic juris doctor reminds me of me a lot. It's a mix of "huh, so that's what that looks like from the outside," and "there, but for the grace of God..." I've told him this, too. It's not the sort of thing I'd usually voice -- you never know who will take it as a compliment and who won't -- but he made one too many comments about being a space alien, and I couldn't quite tell from context if it bothered him or not.
It's mostly entertaining. Every time I start a conversation and have to watch him drag himself out of whatever's happening in the back of his own head, I smile a little in sympathy. He is emphatically not bothered by me "knowing" things out of nowhere, because he can follow the deductive process that got me there. I commented on the age gap between us once. Mind you, he's never told me how old he is. What he did do was put the year he started at our studio in the bio he gave us for the website, and later comment that it coincided with a specific point in his educational history. I can do basic math, so now I know his age, plus or minus about a semester. Without missing a beat, he corrected my guess of X years to Y years and some-odd months, which tells me that:
- He paid attention when I had a birthday last year;
- He also did that math;
- He thought that conversation was perfectly normal.
I spend a lot of my life pretending not to know things I know perfectly well, and not having to do that means I get to turn off about three layers of the "don't freak the mundanes" filter. It's nice.
Perhaps the biggest difference is both charming and thought-provoking. The SOJD is very emotive. Visibly. I was feeling a little bit bad about the "SO" part of "SOJD" when one day he casually remarked, "I am dramatic." I allowed that yes, he did end up on the floor for emotional reasons 100% more than anyone else I knew, and he just said, "I do!" evidently pleased that someone had noticed. I imagine he's less physical about it in other contexts; he does have a day job, where I presume he's expected to sit in a chair like a grown-up most of the time. But in a dance studio, one of the few places in the world it's guaranteed to be safe for an adult to roll around on the floor, he absolutely does, usually when something the class has done has pleased him beyond all reason.
One of the most consistent ways to get this reaction is to just... be one of his favorite people. He'll happily chatter to just about anybody, but he absolutely has a list of favorites, and it is obvious when someone is on it. He's thrilled when just about anyone shows up to his classes, but if he sees a chance to convince one of his favorites to show up more often, he will openly plead his case, complete with prayer hands and puppy dog eyes. They make his existence ineffably better, somehow, and it just lights him up.
It is surprisingly uncomfortable to admit that I have this reaction to my favorite people. I keep a much tighter lid on it. I can be a little happy to see someone, obviously -- I'm allowed to like people, after all. But in my life, letting people see the full reaction has caused more problems than anything. It's almost never reciprocated, and even if they kind of liked me to begin with, the much of a muchness seems to kill that off. I was flummoxed by the SOJD doing it at first, because I've come to associate the open display of that much 'I like you!' with insincerity. It's performative, usually from someone who doesn't like me very much at all, and I am supposed to understand it as a signal that they are willing to be on friendly terms in public, not as a genuine fondness for me that they want reflected back.
The SOJD is being completely earnest about it, but he's so socially non-standard that I basically had to figure that out by learning his language from the ground up. (The metaphor borders on literal. At one point I guessed that he spoke a second language to native fluency. I was correct, but in a shocking plot twist, that language is English -- his parents are immigrants that spoke their native tongue at home. His first language happens to be one I don't have yet, and digging around in it has produced some amusing insights.) I've no idea how most people react to that, or even if they do.
If I had to guess at why we're so different here, I would hazard that while he was growing up, he probably always had at least one place in his life where all the big feelings were acceptable. I never did. My big feelings -- of any kind, good or bad, about anything -- were always treated as an inconvenient imposition at best, and a malicious attack at worst. On top of that, this specific "HELLO, FAVORITE PERSON!" reaction seems to be pretty weird. It's often misread as a crush, from which it is distinct. It's the opposite kind of glad-to-see-you. Crushes make me just as twitchy and tongue-tied and brain-dead as anyone else; a large part of what makes someone one of my favorite people is the sense of relief that I don't have to edit my conversation and curate my face quite so much.
It has occurred to me that people who had reasonable childhoods probably learned to recognize that feeling with family. I never did. I never wanted to 'go home' so much as 'escape situations and be far away from people', which was was usually accomplished by shutting myself into my bedroom, but could frankly just be hiding in a broom closet or empty classroom if I thought I could get away with it. The 'far away from people' part was because my experiences of bringing problems or upset feelings to others mainly involved them being confused and annoyed, which was about as much help as you'd think. I still twitch whenever someone asks 'what do you want me to do about it?', no matter how well-intentioned the question. It was the frustrated shout that ended virtually every attempt I ever made to bring any grievance to my parents.
What the SOJD thinks of all this, I've no idea. He's very aware of how extra he can be, although he doesn't necessarily know when he's doing it, or exactly which bits other people think are odd. He seems at peace with it. I envy him that. I've so far resisted the temptation to start any sentences with the words 'when I was your age...' even though I'm pretty sure the comparison would be in his favor.
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