Shut Up and Leave Me Alone!

Any fan of "Peanuts" will remember Charlie Browns jerky roommate from summer camp. You know, the kid that just sat on his bunk with his back to Chuck? You never, ever saw his face and all he ever said was "Shut up and leave me alone". Over the last nine years I've slowly started to become that kid.

Back in the day, I used to love to socialize. If there was a party I was at it. In fact I was right in the middle of it putting on a show for everyone else. I was always the center of attention. The clown. I was always up for doing something. Anything! If someone didn't want to go along I would bother and harrass them until they gave in. Today it is the exact opposite.

I dread a crowd and the last thing I want to do is to draw attention to myself. That is unless the crowd is entirely made up of people I know. If you invite me to a party and I don't know every single person that will be there, I'm not coming. I might say I will but I won't.

For some reason you can't just say, "No thanks, I don't like crowds and I feel uncomfortable around people I don't know." People take a comment like that as an open invitation to save you from your antisocial outlook. Suddenly they "HAVE" to get you out. You can be guaranteed an invite to every single event this person can think of because for some reason they think that if they can just get you out once, you will realize that crowds of strangers are lots of fun. Maybe I need to voice my objections in a more raw form. Like, "I'd rather be dead than go to your party" or "As far as I'm concerned I already have too many friends."

I'm at a point in my life where I could almost deliver the above statements with little or no remorse. After nine years or so I have learned that being blunt may not be the nicest way to reject an offer but it definitley gets the point across quickly.

So far, people have had a really hard time coming up with a valid argument for my standby excuse, "No. I don't want to." Only when they persist will I turn my back and say, "Shut up and leave me alone."