Bubbly

It's crazy to see just how different kids can be from their parents. I've mentioned before that I am not what you might call an outgoing person. I know there are people out there who can have more than one good friend at a time, and maintain those relationships for years and years, and that's great. The same people are often also able to talk to random strangers without having an anxiety attack both before and after, to go to parties at which there will be people they don't know, to remain comfortable in a room containing more than five people.

I am not one of those people. 

Not to say I don't have friends; I probably have about six to eight friends at a time. But they're not all equals in the friend capacity, if that makes any sense. For example, I can do anything with my best friend one-on-one--talk, share secrets, watch a movie, go out to eat, sit in silence, cuddle, all the disgustingly girly things even I tend to do from time to time. 

But my other friends, though I love them and love doing things with them, are really more auxiliary friends; I wouldn't be comfortable doing anything with them one-on-one. It has nothing to do with them--I'm a selfish, egotistical person, and if I didn't think they were truly amazing people, I wouldn't hang out with them. But I tend to consider myself a very boring person, which tends to have a negative affect on my ability to interact socially. If we're all together, I can be very funny, but one-on-one, I always feel like people laugh just to be nice, like you do for retarded kids and senile geriatrics. 

My dad, on the other hand, never met a person he didn't know. There were times we'd stop by Wal-Mart to pick up one or two things, and since that shouldn't take more than 10 minutes, my sister and I would wait in the car while he went in to get whatever it was. An hour later, he'd come out laughing saying he met a guy who also likes boats and they're going sailing next weekend. Just like that, he bypasses my usual system of friend acquisition, which, now that I think about it, is eerily similar to the way nerdy guys go about getting a first date on bad sit-coms--talk casually a few times over the course of a year, and if that goes well plan a group outing with people so socially inept it will make you look good in comparison. 

The difference in personality between us caused us both quite a bit of frustration, and even anger sometimes. He never could understand why I didn't have more female friends (guys were always so much easier to talk to, but I wasn't allowed within 100 feet of a human male without another, female escort, and even that was iffy) and I never understood why he wanted me to have more friends. 

But I have to wonder what Olivia will be like when sh gets older. Her dad and I are both introverts, but I have no idea how much that matters. Right now, she absolutely loves new people. The other day, we were out to eat with my aforementioned friends, and Olivia was pissed off. She cried the entire time, and it wasn't the little "Hey, I'm bored over here, pay attention to me" whimpers, it was full-on "WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIIIEEEE" screaming. At least, it would be if a baby had any concept of death or danger. 

Yet every time a strange person walked up and had to talk to her, which was pretty much everyone, she immediately stopped crying to smile bashfully and suck on her fist. And as soon as they were gone, it was back to "The world is ending" crying, as if nothing had changed. 

Like I said, I know nothing about heritability of personality traits--my knowledge of "Science" stops at "There are things, and they are made up of smaller things." So I have no idea if this means she's outgoing, or if she's just being a baby, and her inherent cuteness and bubbly personality will abandon her when she needs them most, as was the case with most teenagers. 

All I do know is that every time she sees me, and her entire face smiles, a little ray of sunshine pierces my soul. Whether she grows up liking people or not, I hope she never loses that smile.