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That was more appropriate than you might think since I was one of the few kids in any class who was smaller than any of the famous seven. It still didn’t seem right, but looking back on it I was probably deserving of it and did not like the attention it focused on me.
It didn’t occur to me at the time, but being compared to a cartoon character also fit me like a spiked leather glove.
I learned to live with it even if I didn’t like it, but it did little at the time to change my wallflower personality. Watching and listening had always seemed preferable to talking, at least to me.
When I was a little kid I was usually the one in the corner who silently played with his plastic army guys during family gatherings. Unknown to the adults around me, I rarely missed a word that was spoken or a momentary facial expression that showed an innermost opinion different from that the person wished to convey.
I learned that you could absorb a great deal of info about people when you keep your mouth shut, but I probably did carry it to extremes. Perhaps bashful to one person could be considered sneaky to another, but that never registered at the time.
By now you are likely thinking, “If you are so darned bashful, why do you draw attention to yourself with a weekly column and a picture of your ugly mug?”
Well, it is funny how 48 years can change a guy, even if I still prefer listening to speaking and hanging with the dogs to socializing.
Statistics supposedly show that 40-45% of Americans qualify as shy. Of course, surveys also show that the average person toots 14 times a day. Believe what you will, I guess, but I’m just glad I never worked gathering stats, especially smelly ones.
Mercury poisoning is said to cause excessive shyness. That is primarily based on studies of felt hat makers in 18th and 19th century England, but if you want to remain outgoing (not to mention alive) do not sip any thermometer fluid.
English writer Arthur C. Benson, 1862–1925, could have been the jerk godfather of shy haters, for he claimed that they were predatory and that shyness was a "sinister quality that needs to be uprooted." I think he deserved the bash part of bashful.
I found a few more quotes that I have to share before I go.
"The bashful are always aggressive at heart." ~ Charles Horton Cooley (Who?! What?!)
"I’m so shy now I wear sunglasses everywhere I go." ~ Al Pacino.
And no, I say with a stern expression, I do not wear sunglasses everywhere I go in an attempt to copy Al Pacino.
"We writers are shy, nocturnal creatures. Push us into the light and the light blinds us." ~ John Banville.
You see, if I qualify as a writer, I have a perfectly good excuse for my shades.