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Good Morning! I see that I'm still the only raving extrovert to belly up and admit it. I function best in a group... correct that to "I function best as the leader of the group." The more, the merrier!
A jumping dancing concert with 8,000 or 12,000 other people is a nice cozy place for me. Tim also. If anything, he is more outgoing than even I am. Between us, we know nearly everyone. Anywhere we go, we are likely to meet someone we know. Seems unlikely, but true. Maybe the oddest time was at a crowded shuttle launch at Cape Canaveral, we ran into a woman whom I used to work with 15 yrs ago and her family. That seemed odd because it was such a specific shared interest that we didn't know we shared. But I digress again.
The thing is this: I don't want to scare you. It has just recently occurred to me that Tim and I may be a bit overly aggressive in meeting people. I sort of quizzed Marc and Nate about it last week, in a thread about whether or not they liked to be approached about their readers. It honestly never occurred to me that someone reading, say at a doc waiting room, would not be delighted to chat about our common interest. Turns out, it would probably make them feel caged and cornered and a bit uncomfortable.
This sort of sums it up - in planning a vacation, the biggest part of the excitement is yakking about who we might meet and what we will learn about their culture from them. I always make sure we have a bunch of our homemade calling cards printed up and stashed in the camera case, with our names and addresses and emails and phones and stuff. The Christmas card list (and unfortunately long and rambling yearly round-up letter) gets longer every year.
I honestly can't imagine surviving being alone. When sick, I can stand a day or two at home taking time off from work alone until he gets home, but by Day 3, I'm ready to claw the paint off the walls.
Since we seem to be invoking the skills of our residing pshrynk, do you suppose this ebullient extrovertism might have anything to do with being the responsible latchkey kid at 9YO, with a three yrs younger sister to take care of? It was very scary to go into an empty locked house every day. I would play the TV really loud so that we wouldn't feel so alone.
My sister, however, is one of you. Very much a loner who hates crowds and gets very nervous at the thought of it. She is also easily manipulated. I can talk her into pretty much anything, except going on vacation with us. (She did it once and was practically in shock by the end of the trip, although she did manage to fortify herself to joining in on all of our adventures. Never again, unfortunately.)
Worst case scenario for me: A solitary beach. I know, it's supposed to be some romantic dream, but my preference is a beach with lots of children and teens, dogs, music, and the whole enchilada.
And that is what it's like to be a raving extrovert. Come on over and join me - drinks are in the cooler, so help yourself.
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