Rebel Introvert

I’m told I make it hard for people to get to know me. It’s not that I strive to be mysterious. I think I just have a higher set point for the kind and amount of personal information that feels appropriate to share with strangers. This is not uncommon for introverts (nor for some trauma survivors).

Consequently, I’ve been called aloof when I think I’m just being observant and not competing for attention. Some consider me shy, which can be true until I know and trust you. I’m not really unfriendly but I do rely on others to be the first to strike up a conversation.

Whether that is a trait hard-wired into my neuropsychology, or a coping mechanism born of growing up with hyper-critical, über conservative, prone-to-punishment parents, I don’t know. Regardless, I figured out early in life that it was best to keep my thoughts and feelings to myself, lest they be used as weapons against me.

I’ll tell you a secret, though. There is a streak of the wild child lurking beneath my carefully cultivated surface of outward appropriateness. I’ve always leaned towards furtive rebellion. To be honest, being the sort of maverick that is quietly subversive is one of the things I like best about myself.

The rebel introvert side of me comes out mostly in writing. That’s much more satisfying to me than the sort of look at me, look at me daring that requires adrenaline pumping, death defying acts of high energy stupidity like tightrope walking across the Grand Canyon.

The risk-taking I do now is mostly via the laptop. In the past, risk-taking included traveling alone through foreign countries where I didn’t speak the language. And it started with marrying as soon as I was 21 to someone I barely knew, in order to not spend another summer with my parents.

Chance Meeting

A little social risk-taking was how I got involved with a young man in the Air Force when I was enrolled in a women’s college and working as a dorm monitor. You see, back in the in loco parentis days, students had to sign out of the dorm if they were going off campus, and sitting at a desk next to the dormitory’s front door, I checked them out, and back in.

One weekend in early October, Denver was having an unexpected blizzard, and I had a student missing as curfew approached. That’s when I got a call from a buck sergeant at Lowry Air Force Base, who was on a similar kind of barracks duty and trying to find the airman who had taken my sophomore out to dinner.

The sergeant and I traded concerns for a minute, then the conversation became more social as we both hoped the missing couple would walk in out of the snow at any moment. He was from Mississippi, but only had a very mild accent to my Missouri ear. His first name was Jimmy, and as clichéd as it sounded, he had joined the Air Force to see the world.

Because he asked, I told him I was studying political science and philosophy. I expected, maybe even hoped, that would be a turn off. I remember wanting to end the conversation that felt like it was getting too personal with a stranger. It was a surprise that he was curious about how I expected to use that education in the future, which probably planted the first seeds of doubt.

There was no way I wanted to be a politician. Campaigning for office would be a terrorizing prospect for an introvert. Although I liked thinking about different ways to think about things, it soon occurred to me that that cognitive skill was rarely a job requirement for beginner employment in a world that prized unquestioned compliance with arbitrary standards.

The next year I switched my major to journalism and later became editor of the campus newspaper. Aligning as writing does with my more natural introvert nature, and learning the skills of critique, exposition, argumentation, description, storytelling and so on that I would use the rest of my life, it was the best decision I ever made.

I ended the call with Jimmy after about 10 minutes, feeling like I should keep the phone line clear (this was in the way back days just before call waiting and voicemail became a thing!) in case other dorm residents were stuck out in the weather and were trying to call in. Before hanging up, he insisted on giving me his phone number in case I heard from the missing twosome. An hour later they showed up, and I called Jimmy to let him know his guy was safe and traveling the 10 blocks back to Lowry.

Although I wasn’t really looking for a boyfriend, somehow that started a courtship. A few months later he asked for my address. He was being sent to Vietnam and wanted to keep in touch. I wasn’t that attached, but he was going off to war. How could I refuse?

His interest in me was flattering. I appreciated that he wasn’t overly tall at about five foot nine, which meant he didn’t tower over my five foot six. It was cool with me that he wasn’t drop dead gorgeous, but had more of a sophisticated classic light brown hair, blue eye look like popular singer of the 1960s Andy Williams. He was quietly self-confident and on the private side in a crowd —unless he was drinking — which matched my energy and made it comfortable for me to be around. But unlike me, he seemed to make friends easily among his Air Force peers, especially around activities like pub crawling and shooting pool.

Jimmy was in Tuy Hòa, South Vietnam for the next 11 months affixing bombs and missiles to F-4 Phantom fighter jets. When he returned to Denver, he was attentive, and still wanted a relationship. That surprised me, but being an introvert in a women’s college limited my options for male companionship. When I announced to my parents that I wanted to spend Thanksgiving weekend in Jackson Mississippi’s adjacent rural community of Florence with Jimmy’s family, that had the benefit of disturbing mom and dad.

Not only was that the sole time in 20 years I would not be home for a holiday — itself deemed some kind of ungrateful insult to family loyalty — but the idea of spending a few days in the deep South with people my parents had not met and vetted seemed to ring all kinds of danger danger Will Robinson bells in their heads. Frankly, I was amazed they let me go.

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Stay tuned for the next blogoir on The Starter Spouse and Privilege Realized.